Seniors remember romance on Valentine's Day
By Lindsay Sauvageau
Sadie Perla was in the middle of a card game at the Leominster Senior Center this week, but her memories were going back decades.
"Rocco and I have been together 61 years," she tells the other players of her marriage. "We've had 61 years of great memories."
Sadie said that she and her husband Rocco have celebrated many romantic Valentine's Days together and many amazing anniversaries.
"We've gone on fabulous trips to Europe, Hawaii, you name it," she said. "We've been everywhere. We've had a great life together and we're still being romantic today."
Pulling up a chair, Gloria Bodanza says that she too spent many romantic moments with her husband Rosario before he passed away. She even remembers the day they met.
"We all used to go dancing at the Whalom Ballroom in those days and one night this guy walked up to me and said 'would you like to dance' and I said 'why yes I would,'" Bodanza said. "On the dance floor he said 'what's your name,' and I said, 'Sadie' and he said, 'hey, we could sing a Mass together.'"
Gloria said the next thing she knew that nice man was coming to Leominster to see her.
"He had no wheels," she said with a laugh. "He'd take the bus all the way here and then he'd walk from the bus to Walker Street where I lived."
Her marriage lasted 39 years.
"Thirty-nine wonderful years," she said. "Not long enough."
"I think we've all got pretty romantic husbands, don't you think," said Therese Lomme.
Lomme and her husband Victor will be celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary in June of this year.
"Vic is still romantic," she said. "But he laughs because he buys me a box of chocolates and he eats them"
In the Senior Center office, clerk Laurane Brooks remembers one particularly colorful Valentine's Day.
"I got 14 different bouquets of roses," she said. "They were in all different colors, every color you could think of."
"They were arriving all day long," said Senior Center Director Joan Fitzgerald. "They were everywhere."
And even Fitzgerald shared her most romantic story.
"Do I have a romantic story," she said, smiling. "I was living in Philadelphia. I had just graduated from college when I saw the most handsome, most beautiful person I had ever seen."
Fitzgerald said in the mid-1960's she had been sitting in her kitchen relaxing and talking on the telephone with her best friend when her mother called her into the living room. It was there she was introduced by her mother and an acquaintance to Herbert Douglas Fitzgerald from Boston.
"I was in love, love at first sight. My heart flipped. He had dimples and a Bostonian accent," she said. "He was in training to be a salesman for the Sonoco company and in those days you had to learn everything about the company, everything. He was in Philly for a six-month orientation. But there he was and there I was in hair rollers like orange juice cans and probably Noxzema all over my face."
But she was in love and the first of many dates was made. On the first date they went ice skating.
"Afterward, I walked back into the kitchen and picked up the phone, because I didn't think I was going to be long and I told my friend, 'I just met the man I'm going to marry,'" Fitzgerald said. "And I slid down the wall. I had fainted. I think I had held my breath in the living room."
The couple met in January of 1965, and were married in October of that same year.
"We have three boys and seven grandchildren. We've lived happily ever after, I think," she said.
Source: Seniors remember romance on Valentine's Day
