Still Going Steady

Washington Post ^ | 12/13/2009 | Judy Oppenheimer

[Altura Ct.]

It's a cool night in early October when about 200 members of the Class of 1959 from Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, nearly a third of the class, gather for our 50th reunion.

Washington-Lee has received some attention over the years as the alma mater of entertainers Shirley MacLaine, Warren Beatty and Sandra Bullock. No one in our class achieved that kind of fame. We turned out a number of physicists, pastors, businessmen, teachers and career servicemen; one lobster fisherman, one sheep farmer, one felon (pederasty); a few professors, a handful of writers (including Tom DeBaggio, a local herbalist, who has written two books about his struggle with Alzheimer's); two artists, two musicians, two psychologists; a smattering of doctors, nurses and lawyers; and one service member who died in Vietnam -- Nick Krimont, a lovely guy everyone liked. No actors, no one famous.

...There was, however, one thing exceptionally notable about us: the rate at which we married each other. Thirty-six members of our class married a fellow classmate. Three matches ended in divorce; one with the death of the wife. But 14 of the marriages are still thriving. When you include the union that ended in death, that's a marital success rate of 83 percent, significantly higher than the oft-quoted 50 percent national average.

..."This was before divorce exploded in our society," she says. "No one lived together. The expectation was that people would marry, raise families. My guess is: These were all people with shared values."

Was Tolstoy right? Are all happy families alike? A large number of the classmates who married each other were among the brightest in our class. Five were National Merit finalists; several others missed that distinction by only a point or two. The couples include three physicists, several CPAs, at least five PhDs.

[fullchroma]

I remember Tom DeBaggio from his excellent, backyard herb farm in Arlington. Nice man. Sorry to hear about his Alzheimer’s.

[narses]

When you include the union that ended in death, that's a marital success rate of 83 percent, significantly higher than the oft-quoted 50 percent national average.

Those who get divorced often marry and divorce again and again. That skews the statistics.

[afraidfortherepublic]

I wonder how large that class was in the beginning? There were 13 marriages between class members (and many more between members of the class before, or after) of my class of 1956 that numbered 600. But this author mis-counts the number of pieces of jewelry — he forgets about the ID bracelets and class rings that were exchanged. And he ignores letter jackets that were draped over the girls’ shoulders by their sweeties. I married a classmate almost 51 years ago with a plain gold band and got my “engagement ring” on our 20th anniversary.

I don’t know where we stand on the “still married” count. I can think of 2 divorces right off the bat, but nobody thought those marriages would last in the first place. But there have been numerous deaths of one party — one tragically within a year of the marriage and one within one month of our 50th reunion. In fact, I can think of only 2 couples who are still married — my husband and myself and a pair of good friends of ours.

In fact, I think that meeting your spouse in school is the best way. Particularly if you have had classes together — although I never had that privilege with mine. You learn a lot about a person watching him/her answer questions in class.