The Language of Lasting Love. How Does a Couple Stay Married for 60 years? Let Clyde and Martha Millsaps Speak, and the Secrets Come Out.

Elizabeth Leland

By Elizabeth Leland
Charlotte (N.C.) Observer
Sunday, Jan. 9, 2005

Mooresville, N.C. -- After 60 years, Clyde and Martha are still in love.

They sit in recliners on opposite ends of their sunroom, both 78, Clyde with a blue shirt draped over his legs for warmth, Martha with her crocheting nearby, talking about marriage and why theirs has lasted when so many others fail.

"Both sides give 75 percent," Clyde said. "It's not 50 percent. You each give a little more."

"Of course, we've had our ups and downs," said Martha. "We were married right out of high school. Back then, you did not think: 'I don't like something, I'll just divorce him.' When we had tough times, we worked it through."

In the fall of 1941, when Clyde Millsaps first asked Martha Sloop for a date, the divorce rate was low, 2.2 percent. Now, half of all marriages end in divorce.

"I passed her a note in class," Clyde said.

Martha explained: "It said, 'How about a date, or a pink or blue ribbon?' I wore ribbons in my hair. It sounds silly now, but that's the way we were back then."

"It was the third date when I kissed her."

"I remember when you kissed me," Martha said. "We went out for five months before he kissed me. We were at a friend's house, in the living room. It was the fifth of March, I remember that, the day before my birthday. How he came to kiss me, I don't know."

"She was, and is, a beauty, with her brown eyes and dark hair."

"He was so generous, and he still is. He sees the best in everybody."

'I was only 16'

"I lived here, on the homeplace," Clyde said, "and she lived four miles beyond town. There was gas rationing because of the war and we couldn't drive. Anyway I was only 16 and I wasn't supposed to drive. So one day, I got the horse and buggy and rode over to see her."

"A steady date for us was going to the movie on Friday night," Martha said. "He would come to my house after lunch on Sundays and stay all afternoon, then leave to milk the cows."

"In 1944, I was turning 18, and the draft was right around corner, and I knew it," Clyde said. "I wanted to go ahead and get married."

On Oct. 20, 1944, Clyde and Martha married at Triplett United Methodist Church in Mooresville.

"We lived here with his parents, in one room upstairs," Martha said. "His two younger brothers and two younger sisters were here, too. You just closed your doors and there you were."

"The Army drafted me in April, right after the Battle of the Bulge," Clyde said. "I spent May through September at Camp Wheeler, Georgia. When I came back in October for leave, she got pregnant."

'We're not perfect'

"Being apart strengthened our relationship," Clyde said.

"I found out I could do some things," said Martha. "When I went into labor, my sister-in-law and mother took me to the hospital. I was a proud mama."

"Barbara was three months old when I got back in September 1946," Clyde said.

"He was determined to get us a place to live, to start making a life. Just about everything we've gone through has strengthened our marriage. I don't go to sleep one night in the world that I don't thank God for him."

"It's mutual."

A second daughter, Carol, was born the next year, 1947, then Clyde Jr. in 1950 and Dan in 1956.

"Now we're not perfect," Martha said. "He speaks up when I do something he doesn't like. I'll say something about somebody and he'll say, 'Oh, honey, they didn't mean to do that.'"

"I just see the best in people," Clyde said.

"I have a temper," Martha admitted.

"I just let her simmer down. After a while, she realizes one way or another, she may not be right."

"I'm usually right!" Martha joked, casting a sideways glance over at Clyde to see his reaction. He laughed. "But I've learned a lot from him. I learned that a lot of first impressions are not the way it is."

'We ate ice cream on cereal'

"We've been well-blessed," Clyde said. "I had a job waiting on me when I got out of the Army. So many of the other guys didn't."

"We were living on very little money," Martha said.

"I was making $33 a week," Clyde said, "working for my father at the ice cream factory (Mooresville Ice Cream Co.). We lived in a rented apartment."

"Lots of months, that last week of the month we didn't have money for groceries," Martha said. "I always tried to stay ahead. Some weeks we couldn't afford to buy milk, so we ate ice cream on our cereal."

"Everyone who worked at the factory could bring home as much ice cream a day as they wanted. They still can."

"I didn't buy clothes. I made all the clothes I wore and all the clothes the children wore."

"Let me throw this in," Clyde said, interrupting Martha. "My daddy thought she was 'the stuff.' He was so proud of her. She could get a piece of cloth and by the end of the day have a new dress for Carol and one for Barbara."

To which Martha added: "Another saying we have is: He made the living and I made the living worthwhile."

'He was so sick'

"The worst thing we ever went through," Martha said, "was when our son, Dan, got so sick. He has Crohn's disease. It's a horrible disease. When he was so sick, he could not sleep, and we'd get up and sit and talk to him."

Clyde: "That didn't cause any stress between us at all."

Martha: "We didn't think he would make it."

Clyde: "He was getting ready to die. Something like that unites you."

Martha: "When your children are in trouble in any way..."

Clyde: "...you unite."

Martha: "...you go together. Our other son was in the service and we worried about him. He married a girl from Florida. We knew it wouldn't work."

Clyde: "There was nothing Martha and I couldn't work out. You noticed I supplied a couple of words for her, and she supplied a couple for me? We were going out the road one day, and I said, 'Well isn't that ,' and she said, 'Yes it is.'"

Martha: "He'll finish my sentences. And a lot of times..."

Clyde: "...she'll finish mine."

'You rascal!'

"Our daughter, Carol, married when she was 52," Clyde said. "She's been married 5 years."

"Our whole family has good marriages now," Martha said. "Our oldest son was divorced. He married a second time, a Filipino girl and she is wonderful."

"Our son, Dan, never married."

As he talked, Clyde reached over to the table and pinched the hand of a stuffed Hallmark snowman, which sang "Jingle Bells" while a stuffed dog attached to it wiggled its ears.

"You rascal!" Martha said.

Clyde reached over and pinched the snowman again.

"We're so silly, but we're that way all the time," Martha said. "A sense of humor gets you through a little rough time. You're going to have your ups and downs, your little spats, but you've got to work through them and sometimes that's hard."

'There was this lady...'

"She's got her moments and I have, too, and I know it," Clyde said. "I can't think of anything we disagreed seriously about."

"It sounds like we're lying, but we aren't," Martha said. "I used to pout and I wouldn't talk to him for 24 hours. All of a sudden, I grew up enough to know that I should say what I think and then get over it."

"You want me to talk about the..."

"You can."

"There was this lady at the ice cream plant who was into ceramics. I was her boss. She made me a ceramic cigarette ashtray..."

"Oh, she was a flirt."

"...but we didn't smoke."

"You've got to watch out."

"I had dozens of ladies who worked for me at the ice cream plant."

"This one was too cute for her own good."

'If I die...'

"You know," Martha said, "he would be a great catch. If I die, our girls said, 'We'll watch him.'"

"We argue over who's going to go first," Clyde said.

"I think I am," Martha said, "but I told the girls to watch out for him."

"You think about these things at night," Clyde said. "What's going to happen to her when I'm gone?"

"I've had so many things wrong with me, I think I'll be the one to go first," Martha said. "A year ago in August, I went into the hospital to die. I was so down. I have Crohn's disease like our son. My blood pressure was real low. I lost 30 pounds and almost starved. Clyde has just been right there for everything. When I say, 'I can't do that,' he says, 'You don't need to.'"

"When you go to the doctor," Clyde said, "it takes a second pair of ears to understand. We go with each other. I'm the vice president in charge of medicine. I support her and she supports me."

"I thank him every day since I got Crohn's disease. I sometimes feel like I'm a burden."

"Oh, no you're not."

"I never go to sleep that he doesn't pat me right there," Martha said and she patted her hip. "He just pats me three times. If I didn't have my pat at night, I wouldn't know how to go to sleep."

'It's been a good marriage'

"It's been a good marriage," Clyde said, "real good."

"I've never seen him angry," Martha said. "I can count the times he was upset on one hand. Sometimes, though, I could wring his neck. I like to say: 'From March to October, I'm boss. And from October to March, I let him think he is.'"

"That's a pretty good description," Clyde said. "She's got me pretty well trained."

"I love him more right now than I did the day I married him. I really do. I never knew that could happen."

"Ditto."

The Marrying Kind

In North Carolina, 62,708 couples married in 2003, while 37,000 couples divorced.

North Carolina has a higher divorce rate than 31 states (5.1 divorces for every 1,000 people). South Carolina's rate (4.2) is lower than 31 other states.

The median age of a woman in a first marriage dipped to 20 during World War II as couples hurried to marry before the groom shipped overseas. Now, the median age is 25.

Every year, about 1 million children are involved in a divorce. When those children marry, they are 50 percent more likely to divorce.

Aug. 31, 2006: Writer at Charlotte Observer Wins Second Sifford Prize Elizabeth Leland, a reporter for the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, is the 2006 Darrell Sifford Memorial Prize in Journalism winner. The Missouri School of Journalism administers the prestigious award. Leland also won the Sifford Prize in 2001. [More]