Scott Swanson
Bill and Verna Bell are matter-of-fact about the fact that they’re celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary this Saturday, May 20.
Kind of like how they met.
“He was my sister’s blind date,” said Verna, 87. “I had a date with this guy. My dad wanted us to go together with my sister, so my date brought Bill.”
Later, they met again at a dance and that’s when they started dating.
They met in Tillamook County, after both moved there with their families from other regions, Verna from southern Alberta, Canada, where she had lived for nine years after moving there from her birthplace in Nebraska, and Bill from North Dakota. Both were raised in farm families.
“The first word I learned was ‘work,’” said Bill, 91.
They both graduated from high school, she from Nehalem and he from Wheeler.
They were married May 20, 1942 in Astoria and settled down in Tillamook, where the first two of their five boys, William and Bob, were born.
In 1944, Bill joined the Coast Guard Artillery after the outbreak of World War II, serving until 1946, during which time he helped stand off the Japanese in the Battle of Tinian in the Mariana Islands, and he was one of the crew who loaded the atomic bomb on the Enola Gay, which was dropped on the city of Hiroshima.
After his discharge, Bill worked as a logger and Verna stayed at home with the boys, who had health problems in the coastal climate, she said.
“The doctor said to me, ‘Why don’t you move inland?’ We didn’t know where ‘inland’ was. He said, ‘How about Sweet Home or Klamath Falls?’”
“So we loaded all our stuff into our ’34 Ford and a little two-wheeled trailer, and started driving.”
“We came here and we didn’t even know where Sweet Home was,” Bill said.
“We just followed the road signs,” Verna said, matter-of-factly.
They arrived in 1946 and Bill got a job with a local logging operation while Verna ran things at home, where Ted, Tom and Jack were added to the family.
Bill ended up working as a gyppo logger, doing a lot of work for Clear Lumber, until he retired at “about” age 70.
When Jack started school, in 1968, Verna started working for the Sweet Home School District, first serving cafeteria lunches and later transitioning to the classrooms as a teachers assistant. She retired in the mid 1990s – she doesn’t recall exactly when.
“I liked the kids,” she said.
Since retiring, they’ve done “a lot of gardening” and generally followed a fairly simple lifestyle, they said. They live in the same house near the end of Turbyne Road that they bought 43 years ago.
“It was a stump ranch when we bought it,” said Verna.
“We weren’t travelers,” Verna said.
“We go on a trip twice a week – to church and to get groceries,” said Bill, who has some trouble seeing and hearing.
The Bells are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which they joined “years ago” after being raised in non-religious families, they said, adding that they were married in the Portland Temple after years of civil marriage.
“We’ve had a good life,” Bill said. “We get along good. You get married, you figure on that for life.”