Iowa women in love for 72 years wed
Vivian was a farm girl near Creston. Nonie a farm girl near Yale. Vivian was an indoor girl, spending hours “teaching my dolls,” practice for her dream of becoming a teacher. Nonie was an outside girl, helping on the farm and playing basketball, such a rough-and-tumble guard that she once broke a rib during a game.
Neither considered romance much back then. Vivian caught the interest of a boy once who became a friend but she cut that short by telling a schoolmate: “I wouldn’t go with him to a dogfight.”
Then Nonie saw Vivian from afar one day, and it changed everything. Both were attending Iowa State Teachers College (now known as the University of Northern Iowa) in 1942.
“I could tell you exactly what she had on,” Nonie said. “A gray dress with black velvet trim and big pearl buttons.”
That was it. They never spoke.
But after Nonie dropped out of school and returned to Yale to work, she heard the school in town needed a new teacher. “I prayed that night that she would come to Yale,” Nonie said.
By chance, Vivian saw the job there and got it. She soon met Nonie, who asked her to a movie. Nonie had to work that night but told Vivian to go to the show, and she would join her later.
“She was already bossing me around,” teased Vivian, the soft-spoken one in the relationship. “But I had a new friend.”
“What then?” they were asked.
“This is difficult for us to talk about,” Vivian said.
“No one knew what was happening,” Nonie said. “We didn’t even know it was anything special. I was just drawn to her. That’s all.”
“The hand of God was there,” Vivian added. “Suddenly, we were in love.”
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