Solid platinum
Last Saturday evening I attended the 70th wedding anniversary celebration for Dennis and Aggie Mertens of Medford.
About 80 friends and family members gathered at the Medford Curling Club to join in the fun and wish the couple well.
Aggie and Dennis Mertens are truly something special and you don’t have to take my word for it. According to the U.S Census Bureau, only 6% of married couples make it to their 50th wedding anniversary and just 0.1% make it to their 70th wedding anniversary.
For those of us who feel old getting out of bed in the morning, especially after a night spent celebrating, it is important to keep perspective.
Aggie and Dennis were married on July 1, 1954. Dwight Eisenhower was president of the United States at the time, and it would be 10 days later before he would introduce a plan to build the modern interstate highway system. Singer Elvis Presley’s first professional recording session (with guitarist Scotty Moore & bass player Bill Black) at Sam Phillips' Memphis Recording Service in Memphis wouldn’t take place for another five days.
The median price of a new home in Wisconsin was about $8,000. A brand new Chrysler New Yorker would set you back about $3,200. A first class postage stamp was just 3 cents and a loaf of bread cost 18 cents, while a gallon of milk was 92 cents.
Of course, the average income of Americans was only $4,137 per year, so while those things may seem inexpensive now, it still took as much budgeting and skill to make ends meet as it does for newlywed couples today.
America has had 11 presidents since Aggie and Dennis exchanged wedding vows. The US population grew from about 158 million people in 1954 to nearly 350 million today.When they married, it would be another three years before the launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to reach orbit. Computers referred to actual people who did complex mathematics and the cellphones and smart watches that are ubiquitous in today’s world were the stuff of Dick Tracy comic strips and dime store science fiction novels.
It boggles the mind to consider the broad stretch of American cultural history that has passed over the last 70 years. In fundamental ways, America, and the world has changed dramatically in those decades. The world they raised their children in, is superficially at least, far different than that of their grandchildren and great grandchildren. Yet, as people do, they adapted and adjusted while keeping their faith and marriage strong.
Medford is a better community for having people like Aggie and Dennis Mertens living in it and it is always an education to talk to them about times gone by and hear stories of people long since passed. Those are the types of stories that seldom make it into a history textbook.
I join in wishing Dennis and Aggie Mertens happy 70th anniversary and, God willing, many more to come.
Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News. Contact Brian at BrianWilson@centralwinews.com.
