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Show Story and photo by BILL KEIL Marriage AND THE MidasJoUCh The golden Petries have celebrated marriafe for a total of 2 I 4 years, each cmqite harfog been together SO or more years; (hr) Gordon and Shirley; Bruce and Jean, Rom and Charlene, KeWi and Berbers. It may be that Oregons four Petrie brothers never saw the 1950s movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, set, ironically, in Oregon in the 1850s, but one can't help but compare the hit film with the four brothers who took four wives. Each couple continues to celebrate those marriages more than 50 years later, love and loyalty fully intact. Recently, the brothers and their brides gathered with friends and family on the shaded grounds of a homey old ranchhouse at Crooked River Ranch in central Oregon's high country to cut cake and honor the golden wedding anniversary of Keith, the youngest, and his wife, Barbara the last of the four families to celebrate a 50th anniversary, boosting the family total to a remarkable 214 years of marriage. The brothers and their mates Gordon and Shirley, both 80; Bruce, 78, and Jean, 77; Ross, 75, and Charlene, 74; and Keith, 73, and Barbara, 70 collectively have 1 1 children. With lifelong marriages more and more a rarity, the Petrie legacies stand out all the more prominendy. The brothers say their late mother had a strong influence. She was a prim Londoner; described by Keith as English to the core. Ross recalls, Victorian she was; she bound the family tightly together. Their father came from the stormy, remote Shetland Islands to the north of Scotland, and both met while serving in World War I. Following the war, the couple moved to Canada and eventually the United States, where the elder Petrie found work in the pulp mills and paper business in Portland, Ore. As youths, the brothers were inseparable, active in the YMCA and its Mount St. Helens summer camps; first as campers, then as counselors and lifeguards. The four climbed the infamous mountain together when Keith was 10 42 years before its cataclysmic eruption. (Keith accidentally drove an ice ax into his leg on that climb, and Gordon rushed him down the valley to a doctor. Their mother never knew.) All four graduated from Portland's Benson Polytechnic High School and Oregon State College (now University), where Keith and Ross met their future wives. The other two brothers had an even earlier start on e. their courtships. Gordon and Shirley met in the Bruce and Jean started dating at 1 6, when they worked together at the Portland YMCA for 25 cents an hour. Both couples, women included, were in the fifth-grad- army during World War II when they married. At his younger brothers celebration, Bruce reminisces under a shade tree, Jean and I have always worked together. We never had a lot of money, but we only had one checking account. There was no such thing as This is my money. This is your money. Ross and Bruce and their wives still live in Portland. Gordon and Shirley retired to Sisters, Ore. (pop. 959), where he is a city councilman. Just 25 miles away, Keith and Barbara live in the 1 1,000-acr- e Crooked River Ranch high-dese- rt community (pop. 2,000). Barbara does volunteer publicity for the senior center. Gordon impishly credits hearing for his extended marriage. Shirley has tremendous hearing, he chuckles. I never dared to sneak in late at night. Shirley counters, "God evens everything. Now that Gordon needs hearing aids, hes glad I have such good hearing. Barbara is perhaps the most philosophical about long-lif- e marriages. Love. This is the basic reason behind a marriage, she says. Through the years we found love has many facets that develop or become known slowly. Respect would be one when you discover that your loved one has so many more qualities and abilities than you first realized. Charlene, Ross wife, sees the long marriages as a product of their times. We were bom when people stayed married; we didnt take marriage lightly. Bill Keil is a Portland, Ore., In 1949, he introduced Ross and Charlene to each other during an Oregon State College Mountain Club climb. |
