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Devotion that knows no bounds

"I will love you and honor you all the days of my life," they said. And they mean it.

By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published June 22, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - The four couples entered the room slowly through a door draped with white tulle, the gossamer fabric of bridal veils.

A woman wearing cozy pink booties arrived in a wheelchair. A man steadied himself with a walking cane.

They'd been married for generations, but within minutes, all would renew their wedding vows with tears, confidence and joy.

Rufus and Reba Wilkins were married 70 years ago. They met when she baked a coconut pie for his band. He was the only member to get a second slice.

Francis and Jeannette Bernard, who first spotted each other across their second grade classroom in Catholic school, have been married for 65 years.

For Bill and Jean Forr, it has been 54 years since her minister father officiated at their January wedding.

Married for 20 years, Frank and Margaret Jaquinto count themselves fortunate to have found each other after the deaths of their first spouses. She's 91. He's 83. "She gets prettier every year," he said.

The couples renewed their vows at an early afternoon service Monday at Bon Secours Place, the assisted living residence where they live. Sister Dolores O'Brien, a Franciscan sister of Allegany in charge of pastoral care, presided over the ceremony as Ave Maria played softly in the background.

"As we join these couples in their joy, we also join them in their gratitude," she said to the guests, most of them residents of the Roosevelt Boulevard facility.

"Your promise to each other is until death," O'Brien told the couples. "You did that years ago - 70, 65, 54, 20."

The nun chose familiar passages of Scripture for the ceremony. A verse from Proverbs spoke about the value of a worthy wife. From the New Testament came the traditional reading of the Apostle Paul's "Love is patient; Love is kind."

In turn, each couple recited their vows. Wives clutched bouquets of white miniature carnations, roses, day lilies and baby's breath in one hand, leaving the other free for their husbands' now frail hands.

"I promise to be true to you, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health," they repeated. "I will love you and honor you all the days of my life."

Rufus Wilkins, 93, who later would tell his wife, Reba, 87, that they should take their glasses off for the requisite kiss, placed a hand on her shoulder.

Bill Forr's voice quivered with emotion as his wife, 82, dressed in shimmering pink, looked into his eyes and smiled.

The secret to his long marriage? "You've just got to learn to get along," Forr, 86, said earlier.

Francis Bernard, 85, who said he and his wife, also 85, had always worked and never had time to fuss about minor things, summed up the success of their marriage simply: "We love each other."

[Last modified June 22, 2005, 01:09:13]