Ripon couple share lessons learned in 75 years of marriage

Give love without limitations. Learn to compromise. Have a strong faith. And enjoy an occasional martini, if the doctor says it’s all right.

Summing up 75 years of marriage is not an easy task, but those are a few of the ways Bob and Jeanne Densmore have reached that milestone.

Of course, to celebrate their Dec. 1 anniversary, they also had to live as long as they have – they’re 94 and were married at age 19.

Sitting with their children in their independent-living apartment at the Bethany Home complex, the couple reflected last week on their life together. It’s been a life tested by wartime and illness, and the couple have had the misfortune to outlive a son and a grandson.

But all in all, Jeanne says, “we’ve had a wonderful life.”

What Bob has learned from his wife, he says, is acceptance. “None of us are perfect, and we have to learn to accept the things that are natural for the other person but may not be for you.”

What Jeanne has learned from her husband: “Unconditional love and that you can’t have everything you want. … We all have a vision of the way we’d like it to be, and it’s not going to be, totally, and you accept that and have unconditional love for this person and you take them like they are. Love is a huge, big thing.”

Their love story began when they met as high school seniors in Los Angeles. “His best friend introduced us, and that was it,” Jeanne recalls.

“We knew we were too young when we fell in love,” she adds, so when Bob proposed, they sat down with pencil and paper and crunched the numbers on what it would take to cover housing, food and other costs of living. Both were working after high school graduation, she says, and they calculated it would take a year and a half before they could afford to wed.

“It came out at Dec. 1, that’s when we could do it,” she says. “We were sensible, we did wait a little while. We’ve lived this way, on a budget, for 75 years. With pencil and paper. … We saved and did what we wanted to do but we were always very sensible in our spending.”

About 18 months into their marriage, Jeanne was pregnant. And when Bob enlisted in the Army Air Corps during World War II, she found herself among so many other young military wives.

“Our marriage was cemented in those five years because during the war, we went through a lot,” says Jeanne, who – as their children and Bob indicated she would – did most of the talking for the couple. “Wherever he was stationed, I went and rented a room wherever I could find a place and take our baby and made a home for us. I think I did that about nine times.”

The family got used to not having time together, but still, “we were so close during that time, a lot of people weren’t.”

When Bob was sent overseas, it was as a B-17 pilot. Based in England, he flew 35 bombing missions over Germany. “He barely got back a couple of times,” Jeanne says.

Husband and wife wrote each other every day, though Bob had to hang onto his letters. Those, and a diary Bob kept, were the basis for a book he wrote for family in 2002, “No More Goodbyes.”

It’s their love story, Jeanne says, from their marriage through his return from war when he was discharged in 1945.

Asked what prompted him to write the book, Bob says, “I think I was just looking for something to do.”

“He just wanted to share his story with his family,” adds daughter Barbara Vasko, who lives in Oakdale but used to reside in Ripon, which is what brought her parents to the community about 22 years ago.

Prior to that, the Densmores had lived in Walnut Creek since 1955. Bob made his career as a mechanical engineer, working for a few employers before forming his own company to build heat exchangers for refineries. Jeanne was the homemaker, and for about 11 years sold Avon products.

From first son Bob, the family grew to include daughter Barbara and son John, then six grandchildren and nine great-grands. Cancer took oldest child Bob’s life in 2007, and daughter Barbara lost a 34-year-old son who’d had a heart transplant at 19.

Jeanne’s long string of illnesses that began when she was in her early 40s also has made life less than storybook. She’s had 12 surgeries, been in the hospital 18 times and had about 31 illnesses, she figures. She’s battled breast cancer and lupus and had to have emergency surgery for an intestinal blockage. “I almost died on that one – they told me another half an hour and I’d have been gone.”

She adds, of her poor health in general: “It was really difficult, I was really sick a lot and at times had to have somebody take care of me, and he was always there for me when I needed him. Somehow or other when I’d get over one of these illnesses, we’d have the best time. Looking over it all, it was a wonderful marriage and full of happy activities, trips and such. … We’ve had a wonderful life.”

The couple have lived at Bethany Home for more than two years. Sitting in a living room decorated with family photos, beautiful oil paintings by Bob and a handsome wooden craft box/table he made for Jeanne, Bob says, “She is a very special person and she is very supportive. She has her own will and her own ideas as to what to do under certain circumstances, and we’ve always been able to work things out together. We’ve both had to give and take, which I think we both did a pretty good job of that. And we love, each other, always have, still do.”

The couple have set a high bar for family to live up to.

“Mom kept a good home and dad worked really hard. I think some of that rubbed off on me,” says son John, who lives in Oakley in Contra Costa County. His parents always made a home full of loving visits, great talks and lots of laughter.

On their parents’ demonstration of love, compromise, support and patience in good times and bad, Barbara says, “It’s what we saw, we didn’t know anything else, and it was a role model to us. We never seriously considered a solution to a problem was divorce. That’s the example Mom and Dad set.”

Jeanne adds one more thought. “You have to make your own happiness or contentment. … We discovered a little thing that made a huge difference. We take a day off, we picked our special day. On Saturdays, we don’t go down to the meals (in the Bethany dining room), we have our own thing. We have hot dogs or tamales, and I have a martini. … It’s like we used to live.”

This story was originally published December 4, 2015 at 11:50 AM with the headline "Ripon couple share lessons learned in 75 years of marriage."