Opinion & Comment

After six decades, true love still shines

APPALACHIAN NOTEBOOK - Steve Oden

True love, tested by time, tempered by shared joy and sorrow, shines brightly wherever it exists.

Roland and Doris O. Eastman, residents of Bearwallow Ridge Road in the hills of Appalachia, have faces that glow with true love for one another after over a half-century of companionship.

This August 2, they will have been married 64 years. They have seldom been apart, raising two sons and a daughter on a farm that has been in the Eastman family since the Civil War.

Descendants have burgeoned to seven grandchildren and six great-grandkids. Framed family photographs line the walls and shelves of their home, where the couple sat and reminisced on a recent winter afternoon.

Roland believes it takes hard work and mutual commitment to make a marriage successful.

“Young people today have so much given to them by their parents and others. They have money and possessions. Back when we married, we needed each other more than we needed material things,” he recalled.

“The day we got married, I had $5 in my pocket. After I paid the preacher, the money was gone.”

He has never forgotten the day his eyes settled on a beautiful young lady who was visiting Bearwallow Ridge Church of Christ. Her name was Doris O. Chevalier. He had seen her at Tupper’s Plains High School, but the day she came to church was when love bloomed.

He was 16. She was a year older. He was a farmer, even at such an early age. She worked Sheriff’s Office as part of the National Youth Administration.

“I didn’t go to church to see him,” Doris teased. “He was a handsome fellow, but I wasn’t shopping for a beau. I guess I had seen him at high school.”

Roland chuckled, “These older women, they’ve got a way about them.”

Later, he began escorting her to Bible study. On Labor Day, he left a field of newly mown hay to accompany her to a ball game. While they were away, it began to rain.

“I lost all my hay, but it didn’t matter,” said Roland.

When Doris began writing him poetry, Roland was amazed.

“She’s got a real talent,” he said, exhibiting a poem penned in 1941 when they were getting serious about marriage. Written in a strong and precise hand, the poem asks: “Will You Love Me When I’m Old?”

“She has written me a lot of poems,” he said, but Roland admitted he still gets misty eyed when reading the verses of the special poem that foretold the strong and enduring thread of their relationship.

They married after he asked for her hand while the couple drove down the main street in town.

“I never had a second thought about saying ‘Yes!’ But, then he had to ask my father,” said Doris.

“I sold eight bushels of wheat to buy her an engagement ring,” added Roland.

They started housekeeping on the site where their house sits today. An earlier farmhouse burned. Today, the Eastman family is loved and respected. Roland performs community work and is known for his civic and church devotion. Their long marriage is a model for others in these modern days when commitment seems fleeting and wedding vows are often taken lightly.

On the couple’s 60th anniversary, a sit-down dinner in their honor was held with over 150 people in attendance.

What’s the secret to a long and loving marriage?

“Every family needs God in its life,” said Roland. “That’s most important, in my opinion.” “Hardship and struggles are part of marriage. Don’t let it get you down, and support each other during these times. You might not always agree, but don’t go to bed mad at one another. We are both bull-headed in certain ways, but we’ve never had any major fusses,” he said.

Give thanks for the special times – births, raising children, watching them establish families of their own – and for health and happiness, according to Doris.

Looking back over six decades of life and love, she held Roland’s hand and added, “He still remembers me on Valentine’s Day.”

She knows the question asked in her poem “Will You Love Me When I’m Old?” has been answered.

Will You Love Me When I’m Old?

By Doris O. Chevalier-Eastman, 1941

I would ask of you, my Darling,
A question soft and low
That gives me many a heartache
As the moments come and go.

Your love, I know, is truthful,
But the truest love grows cold;
It is this that I would ask you:
Will you love me when I’m old?

Life’s morn will soon be waning
And its evening bells be tolled,
But my heart will know no sadness,
If you’ll love me when I’m old.

Down the stream of life together,
We are sailing side-by-side,
Hoping some bright day to anchor
Safe beyond the surging tide.

Today our sky is cloudless,
But the night may clouds unfold.
Though storms may gather round us,
Will you love me when I’m old?

When my hair shall shade the snowdrifts,
And my eyes shall dimmer grow,
I would lean upon some loved one
Through the valley as I go.

I would claim of you a promise
Worth to me a world of gold;
It is only this, my Darling,
That you’ll love me when I’m old.