Voyage of a lifetime: Married 56 years, Portage Lakes couple owns boat from first date

Mark J. Price, Akron Beacon Journal
Updated ·6 min read
Portage Lakes couple Ginger and Bud Long sit for a portrait Saturday aboard their 1959 boat First Date. They went on their first date in 1962 on the boat, which belonged to her grandfather. They have been married for 56 years.
Portage Lakes couple Ginger and Bud Long sit for a portrait Saturday aboard their 1959 boat First Date. They went on their first date in 1962 on the boat, which belonged to her grandfather. They have been married for 56 years.

Sentimental couples have been known to keep a memento of their first date. A movie stub, perhaps. Maybe a playbill. A photograph, a swizzle stick, a stuffed animal, a dried flower ...

Some little trinket to remember the occasion.

Bud and Ginger Long’s keepsake is quite a bit larger. The Portage Lakes couple own the motorboat they rode on their first date in 1962.

There’s a sweet tale behind that first voyage.

Let’s go back a bit. The former Ginger Rowe of Cuyahoga Falls and her brother, Ken, used to spend their childhood summers in Michigan with their mother, Lois, and grandparents Clarence and Irene Sears.

“My grandparents had a big house,” Ginger, 81, recalled. “It was a big A-frame and then they had three little cottages for their kids. When school was out, we immediately went up to Alpena.”

The Michigan city, a paradise for boating, swimming and fishing, is located on Thunder Bay in Lake Huron. Its population was 14,000, but it swelled to capacity every summer with the arrival of vacationers and military personnel.

Alpena was the home of Phelps Collins Air National Guard Base. That’s where Oregon native David “Bud” Long, an air traffic controller with the U.S. Air Force, was stationed as a staff sergeant. Units from across the country converged there for two weeks of training.

“We’d go from 30 people on base to 2,500 overnight,” Bud, 84, recalled.

Normally, the station had only two McDonnell F-101 supersonic fighters in a bunker, but when the trainees arrived, it became a chaotic scene. Bud guided pilots as 150 Republic F-84 Thunderjets landed at the base.

“It was crazy,” he said.

In the summer of 1962, Ginger was 20. She invited her friend Mary Jean Middleton to join her on the Michigan trip, noting that there was always the prospect of romance in Alpena.

“Every two weeks, we get new boys,” she said.

How they met in Michigan

Bud was 23 and kind of shy. He made only $75 a month and had to be frugal with his cash. New in town and looking for nightlife, he followed the guardsmen to a popular hangout.

“There was a bar called the Twin Acres,” he said. “It was just like Cheers. Everybody in town went there. Old and young.”

“Everybody knew everybody,” Ginger said. “They always had bands. A lot of the locals went.”

She just happened to be there that night with Mary Jean.

Like a scene in a movie, Bud exchanged glances with Ginger from across a crowded room. He finally found the courage to speak to her, but before he could get close, another guy swooped in and asked her to dance.

Darn it. He went back to his seat. Something made him turn around.

“I went back over there and I said to Mary Jean, ‘You tell your friend there that I saw her looking at me and I want to dance with her,’ ” Bud said.

Ginger got the message. She didn’t usually go for redheads, but it was just one dance, right?

“He looked very military,” she recalled. “Very short hair. He was polite.”

She and Bud swayed to the music that evening, making small talk and getting acquainted. There definitely was chemistry.

“I got a dance and I got a phone number,” Bud recalled. “I called her up a couple days later and I asked her if she wanted to go out.”

“Do you want to go for a boat ride?” Ginger asked.

“I can’t afford it.”

“It’s my grandpa’s boat.”

Ginger Rowe and Bud Long take a picture near her grandfather’s boat around July 1965. They married two years later and still own the boat.
Ginger Rowe and Bud Long take a picture near her grandfather’s boat around July 1965. They married two years later and still own the boat.

First date on a ski boat

Clarence E. Sears, the owner of the Shade Shop on North Hill in Akron, had purchased the Chris-Craft ski boat in 1959. It was 17 feet long, weighed 2,000 pounds and traveled 42 mph with a Chevy 283 V-8 engine. Built with two shades of mahogany, brown and blond, the boat was manufactured in Algonac, Michigan, and had a base price of $3,620 (about $37,500 today). It could seat six people.

A free boat ride with Ginger? Bud was on board.

“She told me how to get out there,” he said. “Guess what the name of the lake was? Long Lake.”

It seemed like a sign from above. Long is his last name.

“So I went out there and she took me for a boat ride and that was it,” Bud said.

That first date led to more than 60 years together.

A Bowling Green graduate, Ginger landed a job as a teacher in Pontiac, Michigan. Bud spent his $2,500 reenlistment bonus on a 1964 Oldsmobile 442, and practically flew the 93-mile distance from base to see her.

“One time, I made it there in an hour,” he said.

“Bud would come back and forth every time he could,” Ginger said.

Louise Long congratulates her son Bud and daughter-in-law Ginger on their wedding day Aug. 19, 1967, in Alpena, Michigan.
Louise Long congratulates her son Bud and daughter-in-law Ginger on their wedding day Aug. 19, 1967, in Alpena, Michigan.

The couple married Aug. 19, 1967, at a Lutheran church in Alpena. They honeymooned in Sault Ste. Marie and then drove to Dover, Delaware, where Bud caught a flight to serve at Thule Air Base in Greenland.

Bud left the service in January 1970 and the couple moved to Summit County, buying a home and raising their children Suzanne and Brian. Ginger’s grandfather hired Bud as carpet buyer for the Shade Shop.

The family lived in Green and enjoyed touring Portage Lakes on the old motorboat, which had been handed down to them. They left it in the water all summer and took rides whenever they pleased. Eventually, though, it mostly ended up in the garage after the Longs bought a pontoon boat for excursions.

Restored boat needed a name

A couple of decades ago, Bud decided to restore the 1959 Chris-Craft with the help of his friend Gil Maringer. It took about a year of painstaking work to bring it back to its former glory. There was only one thing missing.

“You need a name,” Maringer said. “Tell me a story about the boat.”

So Bud told him how he met Ginger in Michigan in 1962 and how she invited him to ride on her grandfather’s boat.

“There’s your name right there: First Date,” Maringer said.

It’s now painted in bright letters on the stern for all to see.

Ginger Long, 81, and Bud Long, 84, sit on their 1959 boat First Date at the Portage Lakes Antique & Classic Boat Show. They went on their first date on the boat in 1962. They have been married for 56 years.
Ginger Long, 81, and Bud Long, 84, sit on their 1959 boat First Date at the Portage Lakes Antique & Classic Boat Show. They went on their first date on the boat in 1962. They have been married for 56 years.

Bud and Ginger Long celebrated their 56th wedding anniversary Saturday, Aug. 19, by taking First Date to the Portage Lakes Antique & Classic Boat Show in Coventry Township.

Hundreds of visitors swarmed the docks at Pick’s at PLX and Smoke on the Water to get a closer look at the rare vessels. Many stopped to admire the 1959 boat, taking pictures and peeking inside.

Strangers smiled when the couple explained the boat’s name.

More than 60 years later, Bud and Ginger are still on their First Date.

Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com

Bud Long wrote this poem about meeting his wife, Ginger, and posted it on their boat First Date.
Bud Long wrote this poem about meeting his wife, Ginger, and posted it on their boat First Date.

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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: After 56 years of marriage, Green couple's boat is First Date