Still in Love

A Valentine story 60 years in the making

He calls her Katie Mae, even though her middle name is Estelle. She calls him, simply, Brown.

She is 79 and has twinkling eyes, an effervescent laugh that brings a smile to his face. He is 77 and sports a neatly trimmed, Burl Ives-style mustache and goatee, both white as new-fallen snow. On occasion, she playfully tugs on it.

Together, they are Mr. and Mrs. James H. Brown Jr. of Bellevue, Tenn., married for 57 years and still as much in love with one another today as that hot July day in the summer of 1942 when they met. It all started when she simply walked through Union Station, then the train depot in Nashville, Tenn.

He was 18, not too far removed from high school and trying to land a job with the railroad’s engineering division through the practice of “cubbing”—an unpaid apprenticeship. “You worked and learned someone’s job, hoping that some time soon there would be a vacancy and you’d be hired,’’ says Jim, as most people call him.

Meanwhile, Kate, as their friends know her, wanted to cub in the clerical pool. She had two years of college experience, but with the war effort escalating following the Pearl Harbor bombing the previous December, Kate, 20 at the time, felt it was best if she left school and went to work.

“She came walking into that room in the prettiest yellow dress, not a wrinkle in it because it had been starched just so, and she wore a white hat and white gloves. Well, she was an impressive little thing,’’ Jim recalls.

The love of his life smiles, never tiring of hearing him tell the story. So began a two-year courtship that led to matrimony.

“We became friends first and that was important. It’s good for a marriage that you can be friends, as strange as that may sound. In so many marriages today the husband and wife don’t know how to be friends,” Kate says.

While their salaried co-workers walked to a local diner for blue-plate specials, they were devoted brown-baggers because they were both employed without pay. Love, the couple agrees, eventually would blossom as they munched their way through tuna and ham sandwiches.

“I couldn’t get her off my mind; she was all I could think about,’’ Jim remembers.

Their first date was arranged through her mother, a fact she has not let him forget in nearly six decades. He called the home where she was boarding with friends of her parents. She actually had moved to a new place, but as chance would have it, Kate’s parents were visiting.

“Her mom set us up, and she was not too happy about that. She was kind of cool toward me, but she got over it. Didn’t you, Katie Mae?” he said, turning to face his bride with a sly smile.

“You know I did, Brown,’’ she says. “I started feeling different about him. I could see all these traits in him that were good. He was dependable and he was nice-looking,’’ she recalls.

In her mind, Kate says, she compared him to the rough-hewn boys in her hometown about 50 miles east of Nashville, and the city slicker held up pretty well. “I thought he was a good find.”

However, that doesn’t mean Jim was in a rush to arrive at the marriage altar, she notes. She pats his knee, while he laughs sheepishly.

In his defense, Jim says, the war was a constant distraction from things matrimonial. Although he had received a deferment from the draft because he got hired on at a Nashville aircraft manufacturer making the Vultee Vengeance dive-bomber, a request for an extension was denied.

“My boss told me I was too ripe for service,’’ he says.

So Jim beat Uncle Sam to the punch and entered the Navy, with the goal of becoming a pilot. He later trained in New England, learning to fly in open cockpit trainers during the dead of winter. “We landed those things on skis, not wheels,’’ he remembers.

Meanwhile, Kate anxiously awaited his return to Tennessee. “I was ready to be married,’’ she says.

“And I was ready to put it off awhile,’’ Jim chimes in, finishing her thought, something the longtime couple frequently do as the other speaks.

In this case, the woman won the war of reason.

“She gave me what amounted to an ultimatum, and I wasn’t about to lose her, so we got married on July 27, 1944,’’ he recalls, adding he was never sent to the war.

“This summer will be 58 years,’’ she adds.

Looking out for each other

What has kept them together during the ensuing decades, these veterans of holy matrimony advise, was not solely love, but love coupled with respect.

“Love will only take you part way,’’ Kate says. “But when you respect and love someone, there aren’t as many obstacles. We learned the hard way, because I was a pouter…”

“And I was a yeller,’’ Jim admits.

“So those early days were interesting, if you could call them that,’’ she says with a laugh.

An important lesson learned was this: They could not change their spouse, nor was it their job to do so.

“But we could change ourselves. That makes the difference, when you’re willing to sacrifice your feelings in exchange for looking out for the other person,’’ Kate notes.

Another immutable truth for these lovebirds was the non-existence of the “D” word. No matter how frustrated one got with the other, neither would speak of divorce. Their abiding faith that God would see them through any difficult situation is an important component of their marriage’s long tenure.

“We pray a lot together and God honors that,’’ Jim says.

After he retired nearly 20 years ago following a three-decade career in engineering and sales, the couple began an extended second honeymoon, traveling the continents. They have been to Switzerland, Tahiti, Alaska, and Canada, among other places.

The couple walks several miles a day, a habit born of Kate’s late-blooming interest in running. She started jogging in her 50s as a way to stay fit and has “an attic full” of trophies won at various races. His pet name for her, Katie Mae, evolved when he was shouting an encouraging word to her at the finish line one day.

“Katie Mae sounded better and the crowd caught on and was shouting it with me,’’ Jim chuckles.

Arthritis forced her to stop running, but the active woman still likes to walk.

“But I can’t keep up with her. She’s too fast for me,’’ Jim says.

To their union the Browns had two children, James Brown III and Elaine Harris, who have blessed them with two grandchildren, and that generation has given the couple two great-grandchildren. In addition, they maintain friendships with several foreign exchange students “adopted” over the years. Reminders of all of them can be found in photographs on walls and tables throughout their cozy home.

Occupying the most prominent visual position, above the mantel in their living room, is a large lithograph of Union Station, the busy train depot where on a hot July day nearly 60 years ago, a pretty woman in a yellow summer dress caught the eye of a handsome young man.

And a love to last a lifetime was born.

Stephen Leon Alligood lives and writes in Tennessee, where he and wife Bertie have been married for 26 years.

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