Locals Share Love Stories

Love is a funny thing. Even after the one who stole your heart is gone, the mention of their name can cause the heart to skip a beat.

Just ask Paul Stern. He may be 101, but mention the name Betty Heltzel and he wants to talk about her.

"We knew each growing up, she was a good person," Stern said.

Stern, a retired farmer of Agway Road, Martinsburg, lost Betty on April 17 after 75 years of marriage.

"It's awful quiet," he said.

For Joe and Mary Lou Furry of Furry Orchard Road, New Enterprise, meeting was the easy part. It was keeping the relationship going that took work.

It was the mid-50s and Joe was living on the family farm at the base of Brumbaugh Mountain while Mary Lou lived in Bellwood, some 35-plus miles away.

It all started several years earlier when Mary Lou's Aunt Fay Furry, also a Bellwood native, married Leonard Furry, Joe's brother, and the two settled down outside New Enterprise to grow apples.

Mary Lou visited Aunt Fay and Joe started stopping by for a look see. The rest is history.

Of course it took three and a half years for the two to get married and get Mary Lou out to the farm on a permanent basis.

"I just got tired of driving to Bellwood," Joe said.

He was making the trip regularly in his 1952 Chevy and he can remember the price of gas as 25 cents a gallon.

Getting married sure saved a lot of his time and money, as Joe recalls.

For John Biddle, retired school teacher from Roaring Spring, meeting his wife Marsha Gouchnour is something he's reminded of every time she wears her charm bracelet.

John was a student at Juniata College working summers at the Roaring Spring Paper Mill. One day he was outside doing maintenance work.

Marsha, a year and a half his junior, worked in the office and was taking a stroll over her lunch hour.

"I was leaning on my shovel when she came around the corner," John said.

It was pretty much love at first sight and that meeting is one both remember well.

As the relationship progressed John bought Marsha a shovel charm, something she has on her bracelet to this day.

Aggie and Jake Carper both offer up a hearty laugh when asked how they met more than 60 years ago.

"I met her at a dance in Newry," said Carper who was raised in the Loysburg area.

Aggie lived in Newry and was collecting the admission fee at the community center.

"He walked in for the last dance, it was God Bless America or something like that," Aggie said.

While chance encounters still occur, increasingly technology plays the role of Cupid as dating web sites bring together people from across town, across the country and across the world.

But even more than a century ago, long distance dating was not unheard of.

An old edition of the Morrisons Cove Herald tells the story of Pearl Detwiler and Albert Podwell marrying.

Pearl was the daughter of John Detwiler a "prosperous" resident of Henrietta and John was a resident of Elgin, Ill.

Interestingly, the two did not meet until a few days before the June 20, 1909, wedding date.

While traveling in Wyoming John ran an advertisement in a magazine expressing interest in finding a life partner.

"Among the ladies to answer the advertisement Miss Detwiler left a favorable impression and a correspondence resulted," the story read.

John eventually proposed marriage and Pearl accepted. But the deal came with the understanding that the agreement could be broken if either party, upon meeting, was disappointed.

The two apparently liked what they saw and the wedding took place at the bride's home.

It proved to be a good match with the two being separated only by death. John passed away in 1967 and Pearl died in 1976.