Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 14, 1992 TAG: 9202140228
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MELANIE S. HATTER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
A LONG, LASTING LOVE
After 66 years of marriage, Valentine's Day can get to be old hat.So Helen and Julius Krieg of Blacksburg didn't plan anything special. It's just another day, they say. And at their age, they take each day as it comes.
Both had birthdays last month - Jule, as Helen calls him, was 102 and she turned 90.
They moved to Blacksburg in 1962 from Connecticut to be near their only child, Noel, a professor at Virginia Tech who also has a birthday in January.
"He [Noel] said it was cooler in the summer, only it wasn't," Helen Krieg says with a grin.
In this day of high divorce rates, some people might be amazed to find a couple still together after more than a half-century of marriage.
"We made a vow at the altar in sickness and health," Helen Krieg says. "I wasn't over-religious, but a churchgoer.
But if I made a vow before God, I'm going to keep it."
After some thought she adds: "If he had beat me up I'd have left him."
Jule Krieg leans forward in his armchair and bends his head to direct his hearing aid toward the conversation.
Like all couples, they've had their bad times, but they've managed to resolve them together. There was nothing serious enough that Helen Krieg would care to remember. Why dig up bad memories?
Besides, "you've got to hang on to what you've got."
Mind you, 50 years ago divorce just wasn't the thing to do. It's too bad there are so many broken marriages today, Helen says. Marriage "holds families together and that's a good thing. To make a vow lightly is not so good."
But don't ask her advice on maintaining a happy marriage: "It's a different world today. I wouldn't give out advice."
In 1925, when they married, there was more family life, Jule Krieg says. The wife looked after the children and "the man was the breadwinner and that was it," he says. "My wife's been good to me and taken care of me.
"The first time I met her she appealed to me and she was a real nice girl," he says with an occasional glance through his spectacles at his wife, seated on a couch.
"We met through relatives," she adds. "My sister knew his brother's wife."
Julius Krieg lived in Waterville, Conn., about 40 miles away from Helen in Stamford, but he didn't let the distance stop him from seeing her. He drove a small Chevy that had to be cranked by hand. It had no windows, so blankets were kept in it to keep passengers warm in the winter.
"My first car was a Chevy. It was $600," Jule Krieg says.
Helen Krieg worked as a bookkeeper in a department store and studied music in New York. She was a concert pianist who was one of the first to play on radio, according to her son. Helen says she would have pursued a career in music if she hadn't married. But she still enjoys listening to the "Hungarian Rhapsodies" of composer Franz Liszt.
She and Jule courted for about two years. When they married, they rented part of a two-story house in Waterville before building a house some years later in Middlebury, Conn.
Both fondly remember their garden that was "bigger than this whole lot," says Jule Krieg, referring to his Blacksburg home. He grew flowers, fruits and vegetables galore, using the organic method.
Julius Krieg retired from Chase Brass & Copper Co. in Connecticut at 65 after 37 1/2 years. He was an innovator in his time, although "I just did my job," he says.
He mechanized a number of office procedures. He introduced a form of offset printing using one stencil to make multiple copies instead of using carbon paper. He patented a visible IBM punch-card filing system and accounting procedure.
As Noel Krieg grew up, "I became aware that my father was a very remarkable person, not only for his knowledge of office and business methods, but because of the intricate, clever things he continually made for me."
One Halloween, Noel remembers, his father made a motorized witch that stirred a cauldron and cackled. But the most memorable item is a Christmas scene of the Three Wise Men that was made in 1934, the year Noel was born, and still works. It was made of oatmeal boxes, wire, ribbons and tin cans.
Julius Krieg not only was mechanically inclined, but he also had a way with words. He has written countless poems and limericks.
"I just did it for myself and my friends," he says, shaking his head at the thought of getting them published. However, he put together a book of limericks in 1989 and dedicated it to his son.
He hasn't written much lately, because his eyesight isn't as good as it used to be. But at 102, his mind is as sharp as ever. He recited from memory one of his poems, "Without My Eyes," that was written two or three years ago.
Making it past 100 has its problems. It was touch and go with Jule Krieg's health a few months ago and he spent Christmas in the hospital.
"He collapsed in my arms," says Noel, who lives near his parents. "I thought we were going to lose him . . . he did pull through nicely." Every day Noel counts his blessings that his parents are still with him.
"You just put one foot in front of the other and go when you can," Helen Krieg says.
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