THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 14, 1995 TAG: 9502140055
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHYLLIS SPEIDELL
STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 163 lines
ROMANCE MEANS more than hearts and flowers to Eldridge ``Tootie'' and Lillian Vick. After 58 years of marriage, their eyes are still lit and their voices still warmed by rock-solid love that has seen them through decades of laughter and tears, joys and struggles.
Long-lasting marriages are not unusual in the Vick family. The loving tradition is also honored by Tootie Vick's brother Lyle Vick and his bride of 56 years, Audrey.
And by brother Robert Vick and his wife, Iris, married for 53 years.
And by brother Frank Vick and his wife, Ruby, married for 52 years.
And by brother Ralph Vick and his wife, Gloria, married for 51 years.
And by baby sister Betty Vick Hoover and her husband, Bob, who marked their 51st anniversary on New Year's Day.
The Vick marriages are not just about longevity; they are celebrations of decades of devotion shared by couples who are genuinely happy to still be together.
``We have always had a wonderful time together, and I can't do without him,'' Betty Hoover said.
``Love has kept us together,'' Ruby Vick said. ``Our feelings today are still the same as they were back then.''
``Back then'' was the late 1930s and early 1940s, when teenagers jitterbugged at the dance halls, horses still drew milk wagons house to house and street cars rattled along Portsmouth's main corridors.
The Vick family love stories could script a romantic World War II era movie, complete with dashing young men in uniform, secret elopements, struggling young marriages and an extended family that rivaled the Waltons of Walton's Mountain for size and closeness.
The siblings are six of 17 children born to Kenneth and Annie Lawrie Vick in the family home on Florida Avenue in the Port Norfolk section of Portsmouth. With enough brothers and sisters for their own baseball team, the Vick kids brought home even more kids, neighborhood friends to pull taffy, play ball, eat dinner and spend the night - anywhere they could lay a pallet.
``It was always play kick the can at Mrs. Vick's,'' Robert Vick said. ``It brought us together and it brought the neighborhood together.''
``At grammar school or wherever we might be the word got out that you don't do anything to any one of the Vicks because you would have the whole rest of them to fight,'' Lyle Vick said.
``We grew up as a family and you stuck with the family,'' Robert Vick added.
Now Lyle and Audrey Vick live in northeast Suffolk as do Betty and Bob Hoover. With everyone else living nearby in Portsmouth the family is still close, with frequent parties, trips and family reunions.
By today's wisdom it is almost a miracle that the Vick half century marriages survived at all.
Almost all of the spouses were teenagers when they married. Gloria turned 16 on Christmas Eve, 1943, and on Christmas Day married Ralph Vick, an 18-year-old sailor home on a five-day leave.
Betty Vick and Bob Hoover, both just 17, wanted to be married in a double ceremony with Ralph and Gloria. ``But I was the baby of the family and Daddy wouldn't sign for me,'' Betty said. So a week later, Betty and Bob, with Gloria and Ralph along as witnesses, hopped the bus to South Mills, N.C. and were married there on New Year's Day.
There were no big church weddings, no lavish receptions and no expensive honeymoons.
Gloria and Ralph had been married in the parsonage of Port Norfolk Baptist Church. Tootie and Lillian exchanged their vows in her sister's living room in Portsmouth. And the others, like Bob and Betty, eloped to South Mills or Elizabeth City, where ages were not questioned so carefully.
``That justice of the peace in South Mills would marry anyone to anything if you had the money,'' Lyle Vick remembered.
But in January, 1942, Robert Vick, a 19-year-old student, did not have the money, so Mama Vick lent him the $20 he needed to marry his 18-year-old high school sweetheart, Iris.
Iris wore the blue dress her mother had given her for Christmas - ``She had no idea it would be my wedding dress,'' Iris said - and the couple honeymooned back at the family home on Florida Ave.
Honeymooners had become so routine at the Vick home that the brothers and sisters were well rehearsed for Ralph and Gloria's wedding night.
``They short sheeted the bed, put clothes pins and coat hangers under the covers and hung a bell on the bed springs,'' Ralph Vick remembers. ``I finally said, `The hell with the bell,' and I don't think anyone got any sleep that night.''
Although all six of the men were shipped overseas, away from their brides for months at a time serving in different branches of the military during World War II, each returned safely.
The couples agree that it was the family and the good example that Kenneth and Annie Lawrie Vick set with a 62-year marriage that helped get them through some tough times.
``Mother was not academically educated but she was very wise in bringing up children, and she instilled in us good morals, responsibility and perseverance,'' Betty said.
``We all got good wishes from our mother and father but there wasn't any money for big gifts or weddings,'' Robert Vick said. ``When you got married it was forever and Mama and Daddy told us that was it, don't look to come back home.''
``Back then, marriage was a point of no return,'' Ralph Vick agreed.
Married life started on a shoestring for all the couples as the men returned from the war to resume careers and start families.
Tootie and Lillian Vick originally set up housekeeping in a two-room cottage next to a railroad track. The house had no electricity, water or indoor plumbing. But there was always a coal fire in the pot-bellied stove thanks to Tootie's brother-in-law, an engineer who tossed a few shovels full of coal into their back yard on every run.
``It didn't take a whole lot to please us,'' Robert Vick said. ``We never had much, so it didn't take much to satisfy us.''
``There are times when anyone would want to walk out,'' Gloria Vick said. ``But we are old fashioned and I decided that come hell or high water I would stick with it.''
Is there a secret to staying together for more than 50 years and enjoying it? Each Vick or Vick-in-law has his or her own idea.
``Coming up in a family of 17 you learn to work things out,'' Betty Hoover suggested.
``Don't go to bed mad,'' Bob Hoover said. ``If you have a difficulty you work through it before you discuss divorce.''
`You need a sense of humor,'' Lillian Vick said. ``I learned to think quickly and talk back.''
``It takes a lot of hard work, understanding and a lot of love,'' Iris Vick said.
``It has got to be strictly 50-50, a partnership,'' Robert Vick said.
``You just need to ride it out,'' Frank Vick said. ``It is not going to be perfect all the time.''
``The secret is in knowing the Lord and having a good husband,'' Audrey Vick said.
``It doesn't just happen,'' Ralph Vick said. ``It takes a lot of hard work and you have to start with the attitude that you will stay together.''
``It is a one-time shot,'' he added. ``If you can stay up all night and talk you can make it.''
Laced through all the Vicks' practical advice however are frequent flashes of pure romance.
Paging through a family album, Lyle Vick came across a photo of his wife Audrey, taken when she was just 20. ``Look at her,'' Lyle said proudly. ``Now can you see why I asked her to marry me after just three weeks?''
Tootie, a former professional boxer and merchant marine, still talks fondly about his 1934 Chevrolet roadster with the convertable top and rumble seat. It was the car in which he first drove Lillian home after meeting her at a dance when she was just 16. Tucked into the family album is the small photo of Lillian that he used to keep under the crystal gear shift handle in that old Chevy.
Lillian smiles as she remembers the luxury honeymoon that she and Tootie shared, unexpectedly, after 56 years of marriage. Two years ago a senior citizens' jaunt to Atlantic City stranded the couple in an overbooked Taj Mahal resort hotel without a room until the management found alternative accomodations - the ultra-plush penthouse honeymoon suite. Quite a change from the Oceanview cottage they shared with friends on their wedding night in 1937.
Gloria, an admitted collector of all sorts of things, has every love letter she and Ralph exchanged and the white peignoir set he bought for their honeymoon. ``I just 16 and had only ever worn flannel nightgowns,'' she said.
Betty Hoover, equally sentimental, still has the brick she threw at Bob Hoover to first catch his attention when she was a 14 year old tomboy. ``Remember, I was used to playing football with my brothers,'' she said.
Along with the brick, Betty also saved her high school annual from that year, the one in which she wrote ``Bobby Hoover - he is the one.''
``Our feelings are as strong as ever,'' Betty Hoover said. ``I am not about to let him go now.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Family photos]
by CNB