February 16, 2000
Love Stories
Romance, marriage endures for couples
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
For 66 years their love has endured.
Married during the Great Depression and having raised six children, Zack and Louise Stocking have lived together through good times and bad, thick and thin. Now living on different floors at the Grand Traverse Pavilions, the Stockings visit each other daily and talk together on the phone at least once a day.
Both are content and happy when reflecting on their lives together. Keeping in touch despite living apart is very important and they make sure not to miss a day.
"Being married is having somebody to love during your life," said Zack Stocking, who counts more than 118 children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. "Marriage is all experience, you learn how to get along. We've probably got a lot more experience from getting married with nothing, we couldn't afford much then."
They have learned many lessons of a successful marriage, which they have passed onto their children and grandchildren. Most of them have married young and stayed married, following the example of the elder Stockings.
"With marriage, you have to have a little patience and understanding of one another," Louise Stocking said. "Too many people expect too much of one person. Flowers and cards are important but not overly."
The Stockings both hail from farm families in Whitewater Township and met through school functions. They courted for five years before deciding to get married, a brave decision in 1932, when he was 20 and she was 19 and jobs were scarce.
"We have learned not to demand too much out of marriage or life," Zack said. "We made some mistakes but there's nobody who can live perfectly.
Sometimes love endures despite a separation of more than a few floors. At Tendercare, there are a handful of residents, some quite ill, whose husbands come from home every day to visit them. These men talk and visit with their wives, coming day after day, week after week, even when there is little response.
"There's a definite awareness of when the spouse is there, they will respond," said Carolyn Kuscera, a social worker at Tendercare. "One man has been coming here a very, very long time to see his wife, it is a love affair."
Sometimes a love affair can begin in a person's later years. Sharing a room in the assisted living wing at the Grand Traverse Pavilions, Earl and Ruth Parizek have been married for 12 years. Both in their early 90s, they married again after both were widowed. Getting married in their late 70s was an easy step for two people who longed for companionship and had long, satisfying marriages. Previously acquainted, they renewed their friendship at a senior dance in Midland and never looked back.
"We courted by dinner and dancing," said Earl Parizek, a retired chemical engineer with Dow Chemical Company. "We knew each other so well we just drifted into marriage. We are fortunate that we knew about each other."