Alma & James Bobb,
Country Meadows Retirement Communities, Hershey
True love knows no age, and certainly no timeline. It lasts forever, a constant in your life from childhood, or it blossoms anew when you least expect it. In these senior love stories, meet four Susquehanna-region couples whose love for each other endures. Whether they met as kids or in their later years, all have built fulfilling lives together, on a bedrock foundation of love.
Alma Bobb points to the portrait of her husband, James E. Bobb. She hung it between her living room and bedroom so she can walk past it and tell her late husband how her day is going.
“He was special,” she says. “He’s why I never married again.”
Alma is 101 years old and has been without her husband since he died in 1982. At his death, he was the retired president and chief operating officer of Hershey Estates, the forerunner of Hershey Entertainment and Resorts. But at first, she was just a spirited young dancer named Alma Louise Payne, dating a guy who was also a good dancer but had no car. The guy’s friend, Jim Bobb, had a car, so Jim would drive on double dates.
After Alma broke up with the other guy, she was surprised when Jim gave her a call. “I thought he thought I was a bubblehead,” she says. In fact, he was so smitten that he waited for two years while she continued with a dancing career that took her all over the U.S. and Europe. His wait ended the day she was sitting in a dressing room, somewhere that she doesn’t even remember anymore.
“Why am I doing this when I could be in Hershey with Jim Bobb?” she thought.
In their early years, Jim went to night school in Harrisburg while he managed the Hershey Estates farms and dairies. As Milton Hershey expanded his company’s interests, the enterprising Jim was often tapped to launch new ventures. By the time he retired in 1974, he had guided Hershey Estates through a major expansion period and had also served as chairman of the Hershey Trust Co.
At first, the worldly Alma, who had grown up splitting her time between Wichita, Kansas, and her mother’s family home in Harrisburg, found it hard to fit into the company-town culture. One morning, she was dreading the afternoon bridge game with some of the other wives. Jim asked, "If you don’t like bridge, why do you play?" Well, because Alma was the new bride in town. "It’s expected of me as your wife," she said.
“If my job depends on the quality of bridge that you play, it isn’t worth a damn,” he responded. “Do what you want to do.”
While he cocooned her from small-town slights, she opened up the world to him. She subscribed to Variety and Billboard, and they saved their pennies so they could see new shows opening in New York. If a top band came to York or to the Park Ballroom in Hershey, they were there dancing, of course.
“He was a marvelous ballroom dancer,” Alma remembers.
Trust is at the heart of a strong marriage, Alma says. “Don’t marry hurriedly. Before you’re married, trust this person completely.” He stood by her while she enrolled in Hershey Junior College and finished her degree at Lebanon Valley College. She supported him as he moved up the career ladder. Together, they raised a son, but Jim died before their two grandchildren were born.
Alma’s cherished portrait of her husband is destined to be hung in Milton Hershey School’s Founder’s Hall, which was built during his term as Hershey Trust Co. chairman. She wants to make sure it hangs there after she’s gone, so James E. Bobb is remembered. She, of course, has never forgotten. She misses him every day, but she cherishes the memories they made together.
“Jim was the love of my life. I’m not looking for anything else.”
Rita & Richard Horn,
St. Anne’s Retirement Community, West Hempfeild Township
When Rita Horn hears the song “Matchmaker,” she thinks of her brother-in-law, Johnny. Johnny Horn was dating her best friend, Regina, and he thought that Rita Keys would be a good match for his brother, Richard. Rita and Dick knew each other from around their hometown of Columbia. In the early years of World War II, they’d been to the same parties and hung out with the same crowd.
But then, as Rita remembers it, Dick and all his friends “went into the service as boys and came back as grown men.” The day Dick Horn returned home, there was Johnny picking him up at the railroad station, with Rita by his side. It was May 1946. In July, Dick and Rita went on their first date, and the whirlwind started. In October, they got engaged. They married in May of 1947.
“Nine months and six days later, we were parents,” says Dick.
In the early years, he was a watchmaker, and they lived in an apartment beside a bowling alley. On summer nights, they caught the breezes by climbing over the kitchen sink, out the window, and onto the roof. They danced at the Maple Grove Ballroom when big bands came to town. Their song was “Prisoner of Love” by Perry Como.
Dick’s brother Johnny and Rita’s friend Regina married, too, and lived nearby. The Horns’ first three children, all girls, arrived a few years apart. Their fourth, another girl, came after an eleven-year break.
In their first home after the apartment, the Horns turned their yard into a neighborhood playground, with a miniature golf course and, in the winter, a skating rink. “More kids call us ‘aunt’ and ‘uncle’ than you could shake a stick at,” says Dick.
When they first met, Rita thought Dick was quiet, but that changed as his career veered into wholesale hardware. He loved the contacts and the friends he made among the region’s businesspeople and farmers. They were privileged to attend an Amish wedding, two of the few “English” invited.
They hold hands. Always have and always will.
“People are fascinated that we always hold hands,” says Dick. “That’s part of the magic of a good marriage. You have to be willing to show your affection.”
In nearly sixty-eight years of marriage, they’ve made “more than sixty-eight adjustments,” Dick says. Every disagreement has ended in compromise, including the "Incident of the Turnips" early in their marriage. That was the night he complained that she hadn’t prepared the turnips like his mother had. She responded by neatly tipping the plate into his lap.
“Never again did I complain about anything she made,” Dick says now.
Adds Rita, “I called his sister and learned how to make turnips.”
Today, they live in a sunny cottage at St. Anne’s Retirement Community. They preside over their close-knit family, including four grandchildren. They laugh a lot, says Rita. Dick wears two rings, commemorating their twentieth and fiftieth anniversaries. He’s anticipating a third ring for the seventy-fifth anniversary.
You can’t be selfish in marriage, they agree. Still, Rita doesn’t like to hear people talk about spouses as their “better half.”
“If you’re only going into a marriage as half a person, it’s not going to work,” she says. “You better both be whole people when you go into a marriage.”
Rita appreciates Dick’s reliability and his helpfulness vacuuming or the laundry. Dick says that Rita has always been “very loving, to the children and to myself.”
“If it was a bad day at work, I could always count on coming home to a loving wife. Everything was smoothed out just walking in the door. And she was there.
Clayton & Martha Nissley,
Landis Homes, Lititz
Clayton Nissley surprised Martha Stahl with a proposal on Christmas Eve 2007. She happily accepted. The next step was telling his kids. They already knew and liked Martha. After all, she made their dad so happy. Still, at a family New Year’s gathering, the kids and their spouses must have been perplexed when Clayton left the room and came back carrying a pillowcase filled with something.
“I think we should let that cat out of the bag,” Martha said to Clayton.
Clayton put down the pillowcase and out popped a cat. Around its neck was a tag that said, “We Are Engaged.” The kids were overjoyed.
Clayton Nissley is eighty-eight years old. His wife, Martha, is eighty-three. They are newlyweds, married since May 17, 2008.
It was 2007 when Clayton, widowed since 2005, felt he would like another life partner. In his prayers, he recalled the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib.
“I told the Lord if he wants me to have another partner, he’ll have to help me,” Clayton recalls. “I’d even be willing to give up a rib.”
Clayton’s bishop knew someone, a writer and retired teacher named Martha Denlinger Stahl. Also widowed, she agreed to consider a friendship. Clayton called Martha to chat.
“I liked his voice,” says Martha. “I liked the way he sounded on the telephone.”
Even before their first date, Clayton bought a book Martha had written, Second Wife, on her years as the second wife of a widowed missionary and pastor. She was impressed that Clayton made the effort to get acquainted with her work, because it showed a shared love of reading and books. On their first date, they played Scrabble.
The wedding was a big affair, with two hundred guests at a ceremony presided over by Clayton’s son, a pastor. She was radiant in light aqua satin. He was handsome in a suit and bow tie. When guests clinked their glasses for the bride and groom to kiss, Clayton and Martha were prepared with something else. They stepped to the microphone, and he sang, “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” She responded in tune, “You may call me sweetheart.”
“And then we did kiss after we sang that song,” Martha says.
After a short honeymoon stay at a B&B, there was plenty to do: selling Clayton’s home on the farm his family had tended since the mid-nineteenth century and moving into a new cottage at Landis Homes, where Martha had been living in an apartment. They finally took a long trip to see the Maritime Provinces with a Mennonite Your Way tour group.
“People got a big kick out of this old honeymoon couple going on this trip,” says Martha. When they leaned against some rocks for a photo, someone joked that the marriage was already on the rocks.
“Here we are, almost seven years later, and we’re still in love,” says Martha.
They never get angry at each other, Martha says. They still play word games, like Quiddler and Upwords. She encouraged him to print his memoirs to preserve his extensive knowledge of farming. Together, they helped each other endure untimely deaths in their families.
She was the steady presence while he recovered from heart surgery. He’s the adventurous one who took her on a hot-air balloon ride. Every night, they read the Bible and pray together.
Clayton can hardly pinpoint the things he loves about Martha: “there’s so many of them.”
“She’s very accepting of me. She’s understanding,” he says. “When some of my weak spots or failures show up, she’s pretty understanding and willing to accept me even at that.”
Martha appreciates Clayton’s kindness toward her and her family.
“He’s pretty romantic, and he’s generous. I appreciate that. He loves to hug me, and I love being hugged.”
Claire & Bill Piltz,
Juniper Village at Mount Joy
Someone took a picture of Bill Piltz and Claire Habel when she was ten years old and he was twelve. They were from the same part of north Philadelphia and had met when they started attending the same school. In the picture, they were holding hands. On the back, Bill signed it with one word: “Pals.”
It was his way of saying, “I like you.” Claire was his sweetie back then. Eighty-five years later, she is still his sweetie. They are still pals.
She caught his eye because she could hit a ball really hard. She was a tomboy, playing field hockey at school.
In their college years, Bill and Claire stayed close to home. She attended Temple University, studying to become a physical education teacher. He studied chemical engineering at Drexel University. After he graduated, he had one day before he had to report for duty in the U.S. Army. On that day, June 12, 1943, the pals got married.
“We got married on the twelfth, because the thirteenth I would be gone, but fortunately we had two weeks before I had to go,” Bill says. “That’s why we got married. Where the hell was I going to be the next day?”
It would be the first of many separations. Bill founded a subsidiary of the York-based Topflight Corporation, maker of adhesives and sophisticated labeling. When the Topflight owner saw opportunity somewhere in the world to set up a new plant, Bill would design the equipment and have it shipped over. Then he’d go there to put the machines together and teach the workers how to use them.
Whenever there was a problem anywhere on the globe, Bill was the troubleshooter who would go for weeks at a time.
“It seems my job was to answer questions, whatever was necessary to be answered,” he remembers.
The separations could be long. “It’s been rough,” Claire says now. “He was away a lot.” She kept busy by teaching school and “being a mom” to their three kids.
Still, she often joined him, traveling with her husband before he returned home. They saw India, Nepal, and Tibet. They went to South America a number of times. When he had gone to Sydney to set up a facility, they saw Australia and New Zealand. Bill remembers going to Russia, but he thinks they were “maybe just traveling through. In fact, we took the Orient Express. That’s something else.”
The pals went everywhere together. “We saw the world,” says Bill. Where did they go? “Everywhere,” he says. “The place we liked the best was Bavaria. The Germans like to eat good. They were friendly in Bavaria. It was boundless, with trees almost to the top.”
Claire continued her active ways until she was eighty-five, with tennis, golf, step aerobics ,or bowling every day. They golfed together. “We did everything together,” Bill says. “I didn’t even take notice. It was just like your right arm.”
Today, they share a room at Juniper Village. He greets visitors with some of the phrases he picked up around the world. “Buenos dias. Como estas?” he’ll say. Or the Arabic greeting “As-salamu alaykum.” Then ask him how many languages he speaks.
“I don’t even speak good English,” he jokes.
They tease each other. He pantomimes hammering as he says he’d be two feet taller if she hadn’t beaten him down. When they talk about their sixty-four years of marriage, she asks, “How could I have stood it for so long?”
He enjoys a nip of bourbon. She likes chocolates. They both enjoy a good cup of coffee together, as always. When they sit side by side, he sings a Cole Porter song. “I’ll be loving you, always,” he croons.
He blows Claire a kiss. “I love ya,” he tells her.
“I love you, too,” says his pal.
By M. Diane McCormick, Photography by Donovan Roberts Witmer
