Published: December 14, 2007 05:02 pm            

Give and take

The secret of the Sullivan's 64-year marriage

By Jeff Clark

Special to the Democrat

There’s a truism among writers that it’s better to “show” something than to “tell” about it.

Charles and Nelda Sullivan, both 82, will celebrate their 64th wedding anniversary Dec. 18. Though I’d been “told” about the Sullivan’s long marriage, the couple “showed” me more than those stories could ever reveal.

They have all the old photos and tales one might expect from a long union. But sitting in their living room, Charlie to my left, Nelda to my right, I saw his face light up when she would tell a story. I saw her eyes sparkle as she watched him from across the room.

“What first attracted you to Nelda?” I asked. He took off for the back bedroom, returning with a beautiful photo of his bride when she was 16. “Look at her,” he told me, believing correctly that the framed treasure answered my question. “She was a lot of fun to be around,” and their warmth told me their adventure never ended. Nelda laughed and added that few thought their marriage would work — a city girl marrying a poor peanut farmer.

Charlie’s the kind of guy you shake hands with, and 10 minutes later feel you’ve known him your whole life. I asked, as most do, what the secret to a long marriage is. Two words, he told me — “give” and “take.” You can’t really go into a lifetime relationship being selfish and expect it to work, he shared. In all those years together, he smiled, his bride only threatened to leave once. Nelda’s momma told her, you signed up for “better or worse,” so go home and figure it out.

Six decades later, her mother’s advice seems right on the mark.

The couple met at an Alameda School girl’s basketball game — he was the ref, she was a player. They laughed thinking of the thousands of basketball games they’ve been to, and the thousands of miles they’ve traveled to watch them.

Nelda’s dad, Lee Bishop, was a powerful influence in Charlie’s life, he told me. Mr. Bishop was a mechanic in Eastland for many years and was one of the best Christian men Charlie’s ever known (more impressive if you know the long list of good folks Charlie’s met through the years). Back then, both the Sullivan and Bishop families raised their kids with a different set of values than some. He resented that strictness at the time, he laughingly remembered, but those values have served the couple well.

Ray Blackwell was Charlie’s best man. Ray confided that Charlie didn’t have two dimes to rub together back then. Nelda has often given Ray a hard time because he loaned her fiancée the two dollars and fifty cents the marriage license cost. “If you hadn’t given him the money, none of this would have happened.”

The couple got married at her parents’ homeplace, between Cheaney and Crossroads in Eastland County. Nelda’s brother, Dale, and dad, Lee, wore clean khaki pants and shirts that day — their mechanic shop uniform. Charlie had gone out into the yard of the Bishop’s two-story home just before the wedding and spotted Dale bent over his back bumper tying cans to the back of the honeymoon getaway car. Charlie gave his friend a prankish kick that sent him flying to the ground. It turned out the man he sent sprawling was Lee Bishop, Charlie’s (hopefully) future father-in-law. The taciturn Mr. Bishop didn’t say a word, and the marriage somehow went forward.

The newlyweds lived on the Thelbert Jones place that first year in a dog run house, a wood cook stove their only heat. They paid $2.50 per month in rent (I confirmed this amount twice).

December 1944 brought a dreaded draft notice to young Charles’ hands. Nelda was more than eight months pregnant with John. Charlie went to see Dr. Blackwell over in Gorman, hoping for a cure to speed the birthing date along. Dr. Blackwell said he couldn’t instruct him to do this, but a cup of caster oil had been known to induce many a country birth. About midnight, the doctor’s suggestion bore fruit. Charlie bundled his wife and her mother into a 1936 Ford rattletrap, and the car wheezed south toward the Blackwell Hospital in Gorman, Nelda in labor.

Now that car had bad lights, was not in the greatest shape, had lived a tough life, you might say. The only thing dependable on that vehicle was the radiator, guaranteed to overheat. Charlie stopped the sputtering beast at the iron-beamed Leon River Bridge south of Alameda to feed the radiator more water, rushing up and down the steep river bank by moonlight. Nelda’s mom told Charlie in no uncertain terms he’d better get a move on if he didn’t want to deliver that baby right there in the backseat of the car.

Dec. 27 he left home to serve his country.

Lee Bishop owned the Farmers Stage Line, a bus company that ran between Roby through Eastland, then to San Antonio back then. Charlie remembered Nelda and the baby riding a bus to San Antonio to visit him while he was still in basic training. He didn’t have any leave yet, nor really a good excuse for being off base. He walked out to the gate of the base in his first class uniform and was stopped by a sergeant as Taps were playing. The sergeant told the young serviceman to face toward where the music was coming from and salute.

“Are you going AWOL?” the sergeant wanted to know. Charlie explained that his wife and baby were in town to visit — the emotion of their separation showing itself 60-plus years after the event. The sergeant loaded Charlie up, dropping him off to see Nelda and the baby, then picking him up at 10 and returning him to the base.

There would be other examples of the Sullivans suffering in order to be together. Because of his military points (he had a wife and child), Charlie ended up serving most of the time at Tilton General Hospital at Fort Dix. He was promoted four times in four months — from PVC to Staff Sergeant, having 1,800 men under his command when he left. When he became eligible for discharge, they offered him a higher rank to stay. He thought that’d be fine, except, as he told the officer “he’d have to find a new wife.”

I met with Ray Blackwell a few days before the Sullivan visit. Ray told of how Charlie had been instrumental in keeping him on the right track after he got back from the war — a young man a little unsure what to do next. Ray went to Charlie and Nelda’s apartment in Ranger at 4 a.m., his first stop after being discharged. Charlie got Ray to sign up at Ranger College. He later persuaded him to go to Abilene Christian University. The Blackwell and Sullivan couples are still dear friends.

Charlie’s resume is long, and his stories encyclopedic. After the service he went to Ranger College, then ACU, being a defensive end of some note. He worked at gas stations and odd jobs to make ends meet. Charlie’s dad, Carl, needed some help at his grocery in Weatherford and gave his son a call. Though Sullivan wanted to stay at ACU, Nelda hadn’t had a new dress in the six years they’d been married. He moved to Weatherford in 1950 to help at his dad’s as butcher. He then became assistant vice president at the old M & F Bank in Weatherford. They then moved to Houston in 1957, Irving in 1960, then back to Weatherford in 1968, working for several insurance-related companies. In 1974, he got tired of living out of a suitcase and opened his own insurance company, merging it with another in 1988. He even had one account until last year, who left finally for another company. They’ve since called wanting him back. He helped get the Weatherford Little League program going, the Junior Chamber of Commerce, and was Weatherford Mayor in 1957. He received good advice from a prior mayor on a number of issues during his own term, legendary congressman Jim Wright. They are friends yet.

Charlie and Nelda had been over to Weatherford College a couple of days before our visit. He smiled as he remembered kids coming over to shake his hand, to give Nelda a hug. They have been active with the Weatherford College Basketball Booster Club since its inception, but they’ve supported the basketball program since 1950, when they would haul boys around in their station wagon. The couple now counts kids they met in the program as their own, from around the world.

Nelda, too, has had a long career, being mom to three sons, then three adopted grandsons. She attended Mary Hardin Baylor, then business school. She worked in a district attorney’s office, school districts, tax offices, helped manage the insurance office and many other tasks large and small in between.

Charlie remembered his first act as Weatherford mayor was to have to fire his wife — not too bright an act, his friends told him, as she made five times what he did in salary. They’ve traveled all over the United States, including recently managing a lodge in Aspen Park, Colo.

The Lord’s blessed us, Mr. Sullivan told me. “We have more friends than 10 other couples do.” he shared. Wherever they travel, all over the nation, the couple will run into someone they know.

Even though they’ve been together so long, he told me, he feels they’ve gotten even closer the last few years than ever before. The Sullivans have three sons, John, Bobby and David. They have five grandkids, nine great-grandkids, and one great-great-grandchild with another on the way.

He told me you have to be able to laugh at yourself, laugh at tough situations. Story after story revealed a couple that had helped people going through tough times realize that the sun would come up again, that things might not be as bleak as they believed. We don’t always see God’s hand in the good times, but harder times bring it into crystal focus.

I tried to fix Charlie and Nelda’s faces in my mind as I got up to leave. I knew it would be impossible to recount the full power of what I’d just seen. You hear legends of two hearts growing into one through the years — a husband and a wife becoming halves of one life — indivisible. A groom that still worships his young bride, the mother of his children, his partner through thick and thin. A woman that still laughs at her husband’s jokes she’s heard a million times, that took her mom’s advice and built a life with this man that continues to touch so many.

There’s a richness alive in this home that many will never know. I smile finally as I drive away, happy in their lesson — in actions that I was blessed to see, in a loving marriage I was privileged to observe.

        

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