Wasilla couple reflects on 70 years of marriage

March 6, 1943, began like any other day for 15-year-old Carley Shelhamer growing up on her father’s Southwestern Colorado dairy farm. She arose before the sun to milk the cows, then as the day came to a close, she returned to give them another good milking.

Oh, in between milkings, she got married.

With World War II raging and her brothers in the military, Carley said she had to assume more duties around the farm.

“My dad had a dairy farm and we were milking 56 cows,” she recalled. “My brothers were in the service and my dad got ill.”

What she did have was a young man who admits he fell in love with Carley at first sight.

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Dwight Hansen said he recalls seeing Carley while they both attended Bayfield High School. He was a 17-year-old senior and she a 14-year-old sophomore. They courted and when Carley’s father fell ill, Dwight helped out around the dairy farm, she said. He was disqualified from military service for a medical issue.

“I was very fortunate to have an Army reject to help me,” Carley said from her Wasilla home last week. She and Dwight sat down for an interview a few days before their March 6 wedding anniversary — their 70th.

“We had been going together for a year and a half and we decided to marry and we moved to Ouray (Colo.),” Carley said.

They bounced around for a few years with Dwight holding several jobs, including working as a construction foreman in the Million Dollar Mine near Ouray. They had two children — Glenna and Gary — then came to Alaska in 1949.

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Carley and Dwight both remember their first date.

“He walked me home from school,” she said.

Dwight also recalls an early school dance they attended as teens.

“We had a country dance and I convinced her folks to let me take her,” he said. “We were supposed to be back (by a certain time), and when I took her home, (it was so late) her dad’s alarm clock went off.”

Carley said she believes she snuck up into her room before her father learned they came back so late.

Now more than seven decades later, they still look at each other with affection and respect. They seem comfortable, like a pair of favorite socks that are special together, but missing the better half alone. Asked their secret to a long and successful marriage, they paused.

“Patience,” Dwight finally said. “You need patience.”

“And a lot of ‘yes dears’ on both parts,” Carley adds. “My mother told me one time that the older she got, the faster time went, and boy was she right.”

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Along with respect for your spouse, a person also needs to keep busy, both said. Dwight has enjoyed a lifetime of woodworking, and his home and those of friends and family are filled with his work — clocks, shelves, tables, moldings and even his first lathe-turned bowl (which Carley won’t let him get rid of).

If that wasn’t enough to keep them busy, the Hansens began taking in foster children in 1962 after their own children had grown. For the next 14 years, the couple’s home became a way station for abused and neglected children. Local and state officials would place children in their home until a more permanent solution could be found.

In all, they welcomed and cared for 484 foster children, and during that stretch of time Carley said she rarely cooked for fewer than 11 people for each meal. Although it’s difficult to remember the details of every foster child, some stories are more memorable.

“They brought us a little fellow with insufficient bile ducts,” Carley recalled. “He was a beautiful child. We had him for about three years. It was just natural to go ahead and take care of them. They were good kids.”

Carley also remembers a group of children — four siblings — who were brought to their home after being discovered living in deplorable conditions. One of the children, an infant, was wearing a diaper that was so old and soiled she had to soak it off.

By this time, Dwight was working a Civil Service job and said he often was surprised with new faces when he came home from work.

“I didn’t know how many would be at the house until I came home from work,” he said, adding many of them loved to observe and help him with his woodworking in the evenings.

Another child, a girl brought to them with bite marks and a broken arm, required the Hansens to go to court to fight for custody, Carley said. And although foster parents aren’t supposed to get overly attached emotionally to the children they care for, both said they could never hold to that.

“I was hard not to get attached,” Dwight said.

“I got to where I could wait and cry on the inside of the door when they were on the outside,” Carley said about when a foster child would leave.

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After 14 years of fostering children and another three working to round out his 25 years in his Civil Service job, Dwight retired in 1979. He jokes now that he’s spent longer in retirement than he did working his job.

“Well, I worked for 25 years, then have spent 34 years living off your taxes,” he said.

Like her mother once told her, Carley said time has gone fast. She knows that at age 85 (Dwight’s 88) they don’t have too many years together left. And like most married couples, over the years they’ve learned to live with each other’s little idiosyncrasies. When asked for specifics, Dwight starts to chuckle.

“I got a long list,” he said before admitting he couldn’t really name any.

For Carley, there’s one pet peeve.

“My biggest gripe is he’ll turn his (hearing) implant off,” she said.

Dwight said he turns it off to tune out the sound of the television, but it also means he can’t hear his wife.

But after 70 years of marriage, if that’s the worst thing she can think of, Carley said she counts herself lucky.

She also seems a little taken aback that people would be interested in how long they’ve been married.

“I don’t think of it as an achievement, really,” she said. “I never thought of this being achieving something.”

In the end, Carley said Dwight is the same man she fell in love with and married 70 years ago between cow milkings.

“He was, and is, just a neat guy.”

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