The Herald, Sharon, Pa.

Local News

February 14, 2012

Sweethearts celebrate 72nd Valentine’s Day together

By Lauren Mylo Herald Staff Writer

SHENANGO VALLEY — One of Mary Glass’s favorite anniversaries, her 50th, was 22 years ago.

She and her husband, Alfred, who lived in Sharon early in their marriage, wed in 1940 and are celebrating their 72nd Valentine’s Day together today in their Cambridge, Ohio home.

“You know, you have your ups and downs and you go through the bad times, you just don’t give up,” she said of their tenure. “That’s about it. You just have to work at it.”

The pair met at a Halloween party in 1939, and Glass wasn’t necessarily looking to find a wife.

“I was running around with a girl, and she was sick with the measles and she couldn’t go” to the party, Glass, 95, remembered. “Our friends at the party called me and asked me, well why don’t you come anyway, and I did.”

His friends put him in the fortune teller’s booth, and a woman dressed in a long evening gown came to have her future told. Instead, her future was born.

“We started dating and everything fell in place,” Glass said.

Mrs. Glass, whose maiden name was Stillwagon and who lived on Taylor Avenue in Sharon at the time, said it wasn’t really love at first sight on her part. But when the fortune teller showed up at her door not long after the party, she said yes to a movie.

Three months later, they were married. Jan. 13 marks the couple’s anniversary as well as Glass’s birthday.

“We eloped, which didn’t make our families happy,” Mrs. Glass said. “But they got over it.”

They settled in Youngstown for a few years, then bought their first home on Stateline Road in Sharon, where they lived before moving back to Ohio.

Glass left college to serve in World War II then became a teacher. After putting their two girls, Sally Jean and Marian, through college, the family told Mrs. Glass it was her turn.

“I got a degree and I taught, but I didn’t teach very long because by then I was getting older,” she said, noting the other important thing she looks back on is that she and her husband both grew up during the depression and knew the value of a dollar. Each of them had six brothers and sisters.

For their 50th anniversary, they had a party in the Shenango Valley, where their families still lived, and an open house in Ohio.

Their 72nd last month was a little more low key.

“We don’t get out as much as we used to,” Mrs. Glass said with a laugh.

Their daughter, Rev. Marian Glass, who lives in Brookfield but visited her parents this weekend, said the 72nd anniversary passed without much fanfare.

“In a way, they know that it’s a long time, but we had all the parties and that over the years and you get used to it,” she said.

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