MAKING MEMORIES

Phyllis Williams remembers her first valentine.

It’s been 75 years since Williams was a 7-year-old growing up in Alberta, Canada, and she received that penny postcard in the mail.

“Be My Valentine,” read the card, which featured a silhouette of a couple in the light of a full moon. On the back was the simple message, “From Bob Williams to Phyllis Johnson.”

Robert “Bob” Williams was 8.

“We were just small kids then,” Phyllis recalls. “That was my first valentine. I remember because I saved all these ‘first’ things in a box — a special rock and things like that.”

That was in the early 1930s near Fort Saskatchewan, where Phyllis and her family lived. Bob lived about seven miles away in the town of Gibbons. Although the families were friendly, the children hardly knew that first valentine would be the beginning of a lifelong love story that wouldn’t begin to blossom until more than 20 years later.

“We knew each other as children, but we didn’t get together that often,” Phyllis said.

“I’d say the main contact then was our families would visit each other,” Bob adds. “Her family would come to things in Gibbons, like the harvest and such.”

They weren’t teenage sweethearts and after high school went their separate ways — Bob joined the Canadian Navy and served in World War II while Phyllis completed three years of nurse’s training and fed her adventurous spirit.

“After I finished nursing school, I decided I wanted to see the country, so I went (different places) and spent a year wherever I worked,” she said. “I went to California, Michigan, Colorado and Wyoming. I really did some sightseeing wherever I went.”

Eventually, her desire to visit new places led her to Anchorage, where she got a job as a nurse at the old Providence Hospital. What Phyllis didn’t know was, like so many who make the trip up the Alcan, was that the highway would lead her to her destiny.

Reunited

After his military service was up and while Phyllis was traveling the Lower 48 as a nurse, Bob landed in Alaska Dec. 30, 1949. He had been logging the Butte near Palmer for about 10 years by the time Phyllis moved to Anchorage. Neither had seen each other or been in touch for about 15 years.

“Well, Bob’s mother subscribed to the Gibbons Herald, just a small local paper, and read that I was coming to Alaska,” Phyllis said. “His mother mailed him the paper.”

After reading about his former childhood valentine, “I thought that I remember Phyllis Johnson,” Bob said. “So, I thought, ‘I’m going to have to look her up.’”

So began a year courtship that ended in a small wedding and more than 50 years of marriage. The couple, now retired, recalled that although both had large families in Canada, they decided for a rather simple ceremony when they wed Sept. 14, 1959. It was 5:15 a.m. and they were to catch a 7 a.m. flight to Nome to begin their honeymoon. He was 32 and she was 30.

“We were married by candlelight,” Phyllis said. “The pastor’s wife played the organ and sang a solo, and there were six people from the congregation who came to our wedding.”

The reception was Bob serving the half-dozen witnesses coffee at the airport.

“During that year of courtship, he was always so good to me,” Phyllis said. It was during that time she realized she was in love. “He showered me with gifts, like a beautiful muskrat parka. And we enjoyed the same things. We went hiking and ptarmigan hunting.”

After more than five decades as husband and wife, the couple still enjoys each other’s company and sometimes complete each other’s thoughts.

“I think I even bought you some flowers,” Bob said with a chuckle. “I was thinking, ‘I guess I’m in my 30s, so it’s time to get married.’”

“I think he also decided it was time for somebody else to do the cooking,” Phyllis said with a laugh.

Making memories

In a time now when more than half of marriages end in divorce, the Williamses can’t understand why marriage isn’t valued as a more sacred commitment. Their secret isn’t tied to money or material things, they said; rather, it’s the love they share and the memories they’ve made over the past 50 years.

“The thought of ever parting never entered our minds, I don’t think,” Bob said. “One main thing was that on Sunday morning, the first priority was to be in church.”

Robbie is the couple’s oldest son, born Oct. 24, 1964. He’s now a teacher at Colony High School. David, a chef and food service manager in Anchorage, come along Dec. 22, 1968, and Carla, the youngest, was born May 23, 1970. She teaches Japanese in Wasilla.

“Well, we never had the income that’s anything like the income people have now,” Bob said. “We heated with wood most of our lives. We didn’t buy much meat the first 10 years we were married, we lived on wild game — moose and caribou. But, we got along just fine. I don’t really remember any bad times.”

One memory that animates Phyllis is about the time she shot and killed a bear that was menacing their livestock.

A logger most of his life, Bob also took a turn at growing hay near Wasilla. They had some chickens and geese, which was too much temptation for one black bear in the area.

“One day when Bob wasn’t home — I guess Robbie was pretty little then — the dog started really barking, and there was a big black bear right on our doorstep,” Phyllis said. “I thought, ‘Oh, wow, there bear’s here!’”

On the telephone with Bob at the time, her husband told her to get the gun he had taught her to use “and to shoot it out the window,” she said. “In the meantime, the bear meandered across the garden area, so I took down the gun and I remembered exactly what to do. The bear let out a yelp and went down, one shot.

“Then I thought, ‘I better shoot it once more.’”

Bob rushed home to find Phyllis had taken care of the problem, and the couple ate well for quite a while, he said. Not ones to let anything go to waste, Phyllis also made soap out of the bear’s fat.

Right after they were married, Phyllis spent some time converting Bob from his former bachelor lifestyle, she said. That included cleaning out his coffee pot, which she did by filling it with hot water and baking soda.

“I remember we had this coffee pot and I came in from the Bush and saw the pot was on and I thought, ‘Oh, I’m glad there’s some coffee,’” Bob recalled. “Well, she just stood there watching and let me take a drink of that.”

“And boy, did he ever spit that out in a hurry,” Phyllis said.

Secrets and advice

One of the secrets to maintaining a lifelong love is to be best friends, Bob and Phyllis said. For years, they would have fun by daring each other to do things.

“I remember once in that first winter after we were married that it was 14 degrees outside,” Phyllis said. “I dared him to run outside in his bare feet in the snow to get the paper. It was a long driveway. He said he would if I would, so we both took of our shoes and socks, and oh boy, was that cold. He ran out ahead of me all the way and I just made a circle and went back in the house.”

“That’s right,” Bob said. “She went about 10 feet. That should’ve been grounds for divorce right there.”

That barefoot sprint to the mailbox was a favorite story to tell, Phyllis said. So much so that when their oldest son was about 4 he decided to try it himself.

“He came in crying this one day and I said, ‘What in the world’s the matter?’” she said. “He said he was outside in his bare feet going out to the mailbox.”

When Bob had trouble picking up clothing he’d leave around the house, instead of getting angry, Phyllis decided to give teach her husband a lesson.

“I can remember when we were first married he wasn’t very good about hanging up his clothes all the time,” she said. “I decided that I would just hang different articles of mine just here and there and anyplace, like the kitchen or on the refrigerator, just so he could see what I was talking about.”

If a young couple were to come to them for advice on building a strong marriage, Bob and Phyllis said they have no magic or easy answers.

“I think a lot of the young people are impatient to get married (too soon),” she said. “I’d say take your time. … I don’t know that we have any great advice, just use common sense and be satisfied with where you are.”

And don’t worry too much about finances, Bob said.

“For one thing, there’s never been any argument over money in our 50 years,” he said. “She’s very conservative, just like me. When we worked, we never had high incomes, but we never had any money problems.”

Twilight

Bob’s now 83 years old and Phyllis is 82. Looking back on their lives together, they say they’ve been fortunate.

“It’s been a very loving relationship,” Phyllis said. “You shouldn’t take each other for granted.”

“That’s right,” Bob added. “You’ve always showed respect for me and I hope I’ve always done the same for you.”

Facing the inevitable time when one passes away, they admit that imagining what life would be like without the other “is the thought in the back of our minds right now,” Phyllis said.

But those thoughts are fleeting. After all, she can always make Bob another pot of her special coffee.

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.