By Jolene Farley
Most couples are hopeful when reciting wedding vows that their spouses will honor those vows "... for richer or poorer... in sickness and in health ... until death do us part."
For some it doesn't work out. But for Fred and Laura Paulsen, Hills, it has more than worked out.
Fred, 92, and Laura, 89, celebrated 72 years of marriage June 10. Fred has been a resident of Tuff Memorial Home for the last three and one-half years.
"I have come every day to eat dinner with him," said Laura.
The fondness the couple has for each other is demonstrated when Fred, who suffers from increasing senility and pain from a broken hip, instantly quiets when Laura leans over and whispers in his ear.
"I sometimes wonder if he knows me," Laura said with sadness in her eyes.
She has just moved into an apartment in Hills. After selling many household goods on auction, the home they shared for many years was listed with a Realtor.
Thinking back to happier days, Laura reminisces about their life together. Both born and raised in Steen, Fred was 20 and Laura was 16 when they married.
Although both sets of parents approved, Laura said the rumor around Steen was "it would never last. We were teen-agers, but they didn't know us. Fred was a good husband."
Fred was Laura's first love.
They were married during the Great Depression with a simple ceremony at the Pleasant View parsonage. Oscar Munson was the minister. Their friends, Ralph and Lillian Arends, stood up for them.
Their wedding rings, ordered from the Montgomery Ward catalog, cost $2.20 apiece. They paid the pastor approximately $5 for the service.
For their honeymoon, they went on a short trip to visit Laura's brother in Wheaten, a town in west central Minnesota, about a month after their wedding. But when Fred received a letter that the corn needed to be plowed they hurried home.
The couple lived with Fred's parents for about a year and a half after their marriage before finding a place of their own.
They raised three children, Melvin, Donna and Shirley, and now have seven grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
They farmed for many years, and then drove school bus for the Steen School District before it consolidated with Hills.
Tuff Memorial Home helped make their 72nd anniversary special by hosting a mock wedding for them. "Everyone was wondering who was getting married," said Laura, because the lucky couple was kept secret until the wedding.
When asked what their secret was to a successful marriage Laura said, "Commitment, faithfulness and responsibility. You can't make marriage last if you are not committed and if you are not faithful."
It wasn't easy, according to Laura. "We had lots of ups and downs. We were married during the Depression, but we were on the farm so we never went hungry."
"He never crabbed if I spent any money," said Laura. "It was always ours together. Some husbands deny their wives things; we weren't rich but we were rich together."
Laura says, "The young may feel it will be a honeymoon forever. It isn't. You have to set yourself to be committed, get busy and work together."