[Vision2020] Love blooms Eternal for 92-year-old Childhood Sweethearts

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of Independent Record (Helena, Montana) at:

http://helenair.com/news/article_adf2aae0-2784-11e0-b3eb-001cc4c002e0.html

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Love blooms eternal for 92-year-old childhood sweethearts

BONNER (AP) — Laughter isn’t frowned upon in church, especially not on
occasions such as the wedding of Floyd Cheff and Cecelia Halseth at St.
Ann Church on Thursday afternoon.

Deacon Michael Caldwell, Cecelia’s son-in-law, asked the blissful couple,
“Will you accept children lovingly from God and bring them up according to
the law of Christ and his Church?”

Their children broke up. So did grandchildren, great- and perhaps even
great-great-grandchildren in a moment of mirth that marked a day of joy.

Cheff is 92 years old. Halseth will be the same age in April.

Theirs was a whirlwind romance with a slow spin.

“She was the first girlfriend I had,” said Floyd, who hobbles with a cane
but sounds like a young man in love. “To me it’s almost like a fairytale.
I still can’t believe this has happened to us.”

They were childhood sweethearts, walking or riding horses the three or
four miles between their respective ranches in the Kicking Horse area near
Ronan during the first Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration.

“If we went anywhere it was by horseback, and Cecelia was a terrific
rider. So we had lots and lots of fun,” Floyd said.

They parted in a teenage hissy fit (“My fault. I was a dumb, stupid kid,”
says Floyd). They went on to separate lives in separate states for
three-quarters of a century. Cecelia Shepard attended business school in
Spokane, Wash., and  then went to work for Consolidated Freightway in
Portland, Ore., where she met Melvin Halseth. They were married for 49
years before Mel passed away in 1999.

Floyd lost Anna Mae, his wife of nearly 73 years, last April, and his
family worried if he’d make it through his grief. Floyd did, too.

The Cheffs raised seven kids on a cattle ranch in the Potomac Valley east
of Missoula, but Floyd still has a brother and other family in Ronan. They
were at a get-together last summer at his Missoula home when Don Shepard’s
name came up. The youngest of Cecelia’s seven siblings still lived in the
Mission Valley but he wasn’t doing well.

“I knew he had cancer, and I kept thinking about it and I thought, ‘I’ll
just call Don and see how he’s getting along,’ ” Floyd said. “So I did.”

They talked for a long time, and were just about to say goodbye when
Shepard paused.

“Just a minute, Floyd,” Shepard said. “Do you ever hear from my sister
Cecelia?”

Cheff said no. He had no idea where she lived or even what her married
name was.

“He said if you want I’ll give you her phone number. I said, yeah, I’d
like that.”

It wasn’t an easy decision to make the call.

“My wife had been gone less than a year, and I felt kind of guilty even
calling Cecelia,” Cheff said. “But I wanted to.”

He talked over the matter with his daughters: JoAnn Farley, who takes care
of her dad, and Cherie Jacobsen. When they learned who Cecelia was, they
gave their blessing, Floyd recalled. “But I wasn’t satisfied with that.”

He consulted the Rev. Mike Poole, the pastor at St. Ann Church, whom Cheff
had gotten to know at the time of Anna Mae’s death, and who has helped him
through the rough times with regular Saturday visits.

“He asked me, do you think this is going to be OK? I said, yeah, I didn’t
see why not. They’d known each other so long ago,” said Poole, who
ministered the wedding ceremony Thursday.

Neither of them will ever forget Floyd’s call.

“It was Aug. 17,” Cecelia said. “I was very, very surprised. I hadn’t seen
him or talked to him in 21 years, since my mother’s funeral in Ronan.”

Cecelia, you have no idea who this is, he said.

No, I don’t, she replied.

“When I told her, she said ‘Floyd, Floyd, Floyd’ — four or five times,”
Cheff recalled. “I couldn’t believe it. I’ll never forget the sound of her
voice. She was happy to hear from me.”

They talked, the first of countless hours of conversations they’ve had since.

Linda Caldwell couldn’t resist teasing her mother when she first heard of it.

“I said, ‘You’ll probably end up marrying him,’” Caldwell said Thursday
with a laugh. “I guess the joke’s on me.”

Floyd and daughter JoAnn went to Portland to visit. Cecelia and her son
and caretaker, Larry, came to Missoula and stayed three days.

“She and I sat at the table every morning for probably two, three hours
just talking about way back — 70, 80 years ago,” Cheff said. “It was
wonderful, wonderful talking to her.”

Floyd claims it was Cecelia who popped the question, by phone, shortly
after she returned home to Portland.

“That’s what he says,” Cecelia said. “He kept wanting me to come back to
Missoula, and that was about the only way I could do it.”

Circumstances intervened. Floyd fell while he was alone at home and
couldn’t get up. He contracted pneumonia and wound up in the hospital for
four days. There, a rumor got out that he was getting married soon. The
doctor came in and asked for the straight scoop.

“He sat there for 10 or 15 minutes and I told him the story,” Floyd said.
“He said, ‘Floyd, that’s a wonderful story.’”

After more than 60 years in Portland, Cecelia moved to Missoula. The two
of them went to the courthouse Tuesday to get their wedding license.

“The lady there was very efficient, very nice,” Floyd said. “She couldn’t
believe it. She said, ‘My goodness, neither one of you look your age.’ ”

Indeed, as quiet as Cecelia is, there’s a giddiness in both that is fetching.

“He’s been on a cloud for quite a while now,” noted Jim Cheff, Floyd’s
oldest son and his best man Thursday. “They’re just talking all the time.”

“She’s been grinning from ear to ear since it began,” Linda Caldwell said
of her mother.

Between Floyd’s seven children and Cecelia’s three, they have something
close to 100 direct descendants between them, not to mention siblings and
a lifetime’s worth of friends.

On Thursday, 125 friends and family members showed up to see them wed. One
who did not was Don Shepard. Cancer claimed his life in mid-December, but
not before he brokered his sister’s reunion with her long-ago boyfriend.

Cecelia envisioned a quieter wedding.

“I just wanted to come and get married, Floyd and I with a couple of
witnesses,” she said. “It’s not happening that way. Isn’t this something?”

It’ll be hard to see her mother move back home to Montana, Linda Caldwell
allowed. But seeing the sparkle in Cecelia’s eye, how can she feel bad?

“It’s kind of a miracle, in a way,” Floyd Cheff said.

“I think it can give people hope,” said Caldwell. “It shows that no matter
what, there can still be love out there.”

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Cecelia Halseth and Floyd Cheff share a moment during their wedding
ceremony Thursday afternoon at St. Ann Catholic Church in Bonner.

http://tinyurl.com/Halseth-Cheff

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
and the Realist adjusts his sails."

- Unknown