Jurchens celebrate 71 years

A Montgomery County couple are celebrating a major milestone on Friday.
Harold and Roberta “Bobbie” Jurchen, of the Griswold area, are celebrating their 71st wedding anniversary on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14. Harold said he first met Bobbie while the pair were still in school.
“We were about 14, I suppose. She’s the only girlfriend I ever had, who was really a girlfriend, you know. My dad always told me I wasn’t going to find anyone better. And I believed him.  That was 71 years ago,” said Jurchen.
When it came to settling on a wedding date, Harold said it was Bobbie who picked the memorable day.
“That was her choice. I gave her a ring at Christmas time, and I said, when do you want to get married? She sat there just a minute or two, and she said, how about February the 14th? I still remember that day.  I’d run around in my t-shirt all day long, it was that warm. But the next morning, on the 15th, it was very different,” Harold commented.
Harold said he and Bobbie were born in the area and then moved around Iowa for some of the years.
“We’ve lived here for most of our lives. We moved from Montgomery County up to Grundy County, north of Marshalltown around 1962. Grundy Center is the county seat. We lived there for seven or eight years, and then we moved to northwest Iowa, up around the south of Spencer. We were up there for 20 years, and then we came back to the Griswold area around 1988.”
Harold said they moved back to the area to help take care of Bobbie’s parents.
“She’s an only child, and her parents weren’t doing good. Her dad had cancer, then her mother got cancer. After we moved back down there, her dad died in 1989, and then her mother died only a couple of years later in 1991,” stated Harold.
Harold said Bobbie had her own health problems, starting with a stroke in 2012.
“She got over it fairly well, but then her health just started deteriorating from there.
“I stayed home with her for 15 months and took care of her and one day I went downtown to get some milk. We have a deck out on the west end of the house, and when I came home, she was standing there in a house coat and slippers. It was cold, the temperatures were somewhere in the teens. I asked her what she was doing outside, and she looked at me a little bit, and said she didn’t know. That’s when I knew I had to do something.”
Harold said he broached the subject of a nursing home, as he felt being around multiple people and having daily activities would be better for her mental health.
“She said she wanted to take a look at the nursing home. That was in Griswold at the time. We looked and I didn’t say anything more about it, because I wasn’t going to push her there. One night she had trouble getting up from where she was sitting and I went and helped her up and into bed. The next morning, she woke up and said that maybe it was time for her to go to a nursing home. So I started the paperwork. She changed her mind briefly, but then changed it back, so she went to the nursing home in 2018,” Harold advised.
After the Griswold nursing home closed, Harold said she moved into Red Oak Rehab and Care Center. Harold commutes from their home in Griswold on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays to Red Oak Rehab. Bobbie is doing well, but Harold said she tires easily.
After a 71 year marriage, Harold said they have a lot of memories but stressed that they had little adversity and a normal, happy life.
“We had five kids in seven years. Four boys and the youngest is a girl. The highlight of our lives are those kids. That’s really what we always worked for. We had a lot of good times. As the kids were growing up, we went to northwest Iowa. They had little  car races on Sunday nights, and we’d go to them. We got to do a lot of things with the kids. It was just kind of an ordinary life raising kids. In a few years, hopefully, Bobbie and I can celebrate our 75th anniversary,” Harold advised. “We always had good Christmases. And we went on several cruises. We went to Alaska. In my later years, I worked as an over the road trucker, and she went with me in the truck quite a bit. I ran a lot to Canada, and she went with me. I worked until I was 90. Bobbie and I are 91 now. Thankfully, nothing catastrophic ever happened to us. To raise five kids and not have any of them get hurt or killed in the process of raising them, that’s pretty good.”
Harold said their eldest son passed away last year after suffering a stroke. His other four children live in Florida, Cumberland, and Spencer.
As for the longevity of their marriage, Harold attributed it to a similar mindset he and Bobbie share.
“She thought like I did. I would say something, and she would say, well, I was thinking about that. So, evidently there was a mental thing there. I would say, you know, we ought to do this, maybe. What do you think? Well, she’d tell me, I was thinking about that. I don’t know how many times that happened,” Harold explained.
For their 71st anniversary, Harold said he’s organizing a big party to celebrate.
“I’m going to have cake. I’m going to get a cake baked, and get some flowers. The lady in the kitchen, she’s going to get some little ice cream cups, and we’re going to celebrate here.”