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Show am He calls her Katie Mae, even though her middle name Brown. is Estelle. She calls him, simply, She is 79 and has twinkling eyes, an effervescent laugh that brings a smile to his face. He is 77 and sports n snow. On occasion, she mustache and goatee, both white as a neatly trimmed, Burl it. on playfully tugs Together, they are Mr. and Mrs. James H. Brown Jr. of Bellevue, Term., married for 57 years and still as much in love with one another today as that hot July day in the summer of 1942 when they met. It all started when she Ives-sty- new-falle- le simply walked through Union Station, then the train depot in Nashville, Tenn. He was 18, not too far removed from high school and trying to land a job with the railroad's engineering division through the practice of cubbing" an unpaid apprenticeship. You worked and learned someone's job, hoping that some time soon there would be a vacancy and youd be hired,' says Jim, as most people call him. Meanwhile, Kate, as their friends know her, wanted to cub in the clerical pool. She had two years of college experience, but with the war effort escalating following the Pearl Harbor bombing the previous December, Kate, 20 at the time, felt it A . i - Camping in the SmoWe with daughter Elaine. was best if she left school and went to work. She came walking into that room in the prettiest yellow dress, not a wrinkle in it because it had been starched just so, and she wore a white hat and white gloves. Well, she was an impressive little thing, Jim recalls. The love of his life smiles, never tiring of hearing him tell the story. So began a two-yecourtship that led to matrimony. We became friends first and that was important. Its good for a marriage that you can be friends, as strange as that may sound. In so many marriages today the husband and wife dont know how to be friends," Kate says. rs walked to a local diner for blue-plaWhile their salaried specials, they were devoted because they were both employed without pay. Love, the couple agrees, eventually would blossom as they munched their way through tuna and ham sandwiches. I couldnt get her off my mind; she was all I could think about, Jim remembers. Their first date was arranged through her mother, a fact she has not let him forget in nearly six decades. He called the home where she was boarding with friends of her parents. She actually had moved to ar te brown-bagge- |