Spring Grove couple celebrates 75 years of marriage. The secret: 'Keeping my mouth shut'
Earl Swope was roller skating at the now-defunct Forest Park on Baltimore Street in Hanover.
The park was a hangout for teens in the southwestern part of York County for years. It had a rollercoaster, rides and all the amusement park attractions. And a roller-skating rink.
Earl, then 17, was standing at the rail, talking to some other boy. He didn’t know the guy. He had just struck up a conversation with him. That’s how he is; he’s an outgoing person by nature.
A girl skated by, and she caught his eye. She was petite and pretty and had curly auburn hair. Earl told the guy he’d like to meet that girl. The guy was a classmate of the girl; her East Berlin High School was having a party at the rink. Earl believes the guy had a crush on the girl. He couldn’t blame the guy. The girl was pretty.
But the guy called out, “Ethel, this fella wants to meet you.”
He introduced himself. She was Ethel Myers. She was 17, grew up on a farm near East Berlin, where her parents grew wheat, corn, potatoes and other crops, had a few cows and hogs, just as her grandparents had. A farm girl.
Earl grew up in Abbottstown. By then, Earl was working, following his father in construction work, having taken up the profession after dropping out of high school at 16. (“I knew more than the teachers,” he said.) He was tall and slim, with a shock of dark hair and an easy smile.
Earl found her attractive. “Must’ve been nice legs, probably,” he said.
They didn’t talk much that evening. But later they met again, at the White Rose rink, on East Market Street in York, near the railroad tracks past Broad Street. That night, he gave her a ride home. She recalled that he drove fast, way too fast, in his ‘39 Chevy.
“That’s where the trouble started,” Earl said.
'Keeping my mouth shut'
There are 61.44 million married couples in the United States, according to the U.S. Census. Of those, the Census determined, fewer than 6% make it to 50 years, marriages dissolving either through divorce or death. The Census has no statistics on couples who have made it to 75 years, the occurrence being so rare. Some statistical experts have estimated that perhaps only .001627% couples make it their 75th year of wedded bliss each year.
One such couple is Jimmy and Roslynn Carter, the former president and first lady, who celebrated their 77th wedding anniversary in July, although both were ailing. They attributed the longevity of their union to shared interests, including a deep faith and always communicating and reconciling differences.
Earl and Ethel don’t exactly follow that advice.
They have been married 75 years. The secret, Earl said, was “keeping my mouth shut.” Ethel found that amusing, saying the secret was keeping her mouth shut. When differences surfaced, Earl said he would always admit that Ethel was right. Ethel said, “That’s not right. We did everything your way.”
Motorcycle crash leads to marriage
When he was 18, Earl had a motorcycle accident.
He had an Ariel motorcycle, a British-made bike, and he was riding with his lunchbox under his arm, the throttle fixed so it would remain open with his hand off the grip. He dropped his lunchbox and when he tried to prevent it from falling to the asphalt, his bike went down.
He messed up his left wrist, the tendons were ripped, and he was unable to work for a while.
That’s when he decided to marry Ethel.
It was one of the factors. He and Ethel, at that time, had been dating for nearly a year, even though her parents were concerned about the relationship. They thought the Swope boy was trouble, that he drove too fast, something Earl admits to. Once, a cop had spotted him driving too fast in his Chevy in Hanover and followed him all the way to Abbottstown before being able to pull him over. Earl said he didn’t even know the cop was following him. Otherwise, he said, he would have pulled over sooner.
They agreed to marry, Earl said, because his Uncle Lloyd had a house that just came up for rent, the previous tenants having vacated it, and he thought it was a good and nice house, despite not having hot water. (They had to heat water on the stove, and later Earl installed a hot water heater.)
Anyway, he asked Ethel to marry him, and she agreed.
On Aug. 7, 1948, they wed. That year, the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Chicago Cardinals, 7-0, to win the NFL championship, a feat the team would repeat the following year. The Cleveland Indians won the World Series, besting the Brooklyn Dodgers. A gallon of milk cost 86 cents, a loaf of bread 14 cents. A gallon of gas sold for 20 cents.
At their wedding, Earl wore a dark gray suit. Ethel wore a light gray dress, cinched at her waist, and a black, feathered hat perched on the back of her head.
'I don't know how I did it'
Their first child, Darlene, was born in November 1949.
They moved to a house near the Dick’s Dam on the Conewago Creek. There, their son, Robert, was born in 1952.
In 1954, a guy Earl worked with told him one of his uncles was selling some land on Woodland Drive outside Spring Grove in the Pigeon Hills. Earl checked it out and bought the parcel, 11.8 acres, without consulting Ethel. The acreage, on the side of a hill, was forest land, covered with trees. Where others saw a forest, Earl saw a homestead. It cost all of $400, less than $34 an acre. It was, Earl said, “a pretty good deal.”
He cleared the land, selling the trees he felled to the P.H. Glatfelter paper mill in Spring Grove for pulp, and set about building a home for his family. (Interesting fact: Earl said to strip the bark off the trees for pulping, he’d cut a strip around the circumference of the trunk and paint it with arsenic, which would cause the bark to just fall off.)
It took Earl and Ethel three years to build the house. Except for the plastering, they did all the work themselves. Ethel pointed the brick work and did other tasks, including building the marble fireplace in the living room. She also did some roofing. “I don’t know how I did it,” she said.
They built and moved into the garage first. While they lived in the garage, their daughter, Deb, was born in 1960. Another daughter, Denise, followed in 1964, after the house was completed.
They still live in the house. “It’s all original,” Ethel said. It’s a sprawling rancher, perched on a hill and surrounded by woods.
'I didn't like hunting'
They did have other interests. Earl was an avid fly fisherman, tying his own flies. He tried to get Ethel interested in fishing, but she didn’t take to it. He was successful in getting her to go hunting with him, mostly deer with both a bow and rifle.
Once, while Earl was working on the house, he heard a rifle shot up the hill. Ethel had gone out and shot a deer she spotted in the woods. “I didn’t like hunting,” she said. “I thought if I shot it, I wouldn’t have to go out anymore.”
Cuddle every morning
They know being married for three-quarters of a century is a long time, but they don’t really think much of it. They know how fragile marriages can be. All of Ethel’s sister’s children are divorced. Three of their children have been divorced.
How did they remain married? Their daughter Denise recorded a video interview with her parents in 2022, and in it, Earl and Ethel each repeated their mantra that they keep their mouths shut. Then, Ethel said, “Well, if you really want to know, we cuddle every morning before we get out of bed.”
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'It doesn't seem that long'
On Aug. 6, her children threw them a surprise anniversary party. About 40 family and friends ― including their four children, seven grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren ― were there, at the Bay City Seafood Restaurant in Hanover, the same place they had their 50th anniversary party. It was supposed to be a surprise, but Ethel said she knew something was up.
Denise got up to give a brief speech but choked up midway through it. “My parents got married because they loved each other, and they are together today because they continue to love each other,” she said. “Marriage is hard; not being married is hard. We are so blessed my parents chose the right hard.”
They enjoyed the party. But Ethel said, “We don’t think it’s a big deal.”
They're both 93 now. Earl likes to joke that he married a younger woman; Ethel is six months younger than him. But the years have flowed by.
“It’s just staying alive, I guess," Earl said.
Ethel responded, “I don’t think he would have made it with anyone else.”
“It doesn’t seem that long,” Earl said.
Ethel agreed. “It went quick. You just don’t give it a thought. You go on with life and just live it.”
Columnist/reporter Mile Argento has been a York Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at mike@ydr.com.
This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Spring Grove, Pa. couple celebrates 75 years of marriage
