Louise Soper was rehearsing with a junior college dance band in Chicago when Jim McCullough strolled over and leaned on her piano. The year was 1942, an era when Big Band music was the ‘Jim Dandy.’
“Worked pretty well,” McCullough said. “I got a date that night.”
Three years later, the couple was married, and on March 16, 2005, they will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary.
The McCulloughs, both 81, of Potomac Falls, gave their recipe for togetherness Saturday night.
“Patience,” Jim McCullough said.
“Yes, patience, forbearance and a sense of humor,” Louise McCullough said.
As they reminisced, Jim McCullough interrupted his wife to correct some of her accounts of times gone by. She volleyed back, setting him straight on his recollections. The newness that comes with courtship and that keeps a man or woman from speaking their mind has long been abandoned. The ease that replaced it appeared to be another key to the longevity of their marriage.
ROMANCE WAS ANOTHER. After all these years, Glenn Miller Orchestra’s “At Last” remains their “torch” or love song. Jim McCullough started to recite the words. “At last my love has come along. My lonely days over. And life is like a song.”
His wife provided the next lines: “Ooh, at last, the skies above are blue. Well, my heart was wrapped up in clover the night I looked at you.”
The McCulloughs did not sing the words, although Louise McCullough is a talented vocalist and piano player. She said her husband also has a “really nice voice,” but he won’t sing in the community chorus or church choir. “He sings in the shower.”
“I know a lot of bawdy songs,” he adds, his humor surfacing often throughout the evening.
Along the lines of romance, the couple said they always have held hands. In their golden years, the practice has become as much of a necessity as a loving touch. Louise McCullough said her feet and legs sometimes go numb, a common problem among senior citizens.
Jim McCullough continued to talk about hand holding, while his wife went to the bedroom in search of remembrance.
He said he has tried offering his arm to help steady her, but it was uncomfortable. “Now I offer three fingers. She grabs on and it’s wonderful,” he said. “Then I know she is not going to fall down, and I can give her a pull when she is walking slowly.”
She came back into the dining room and picked up the conversation. Unaware of her husband’s comments, she said, laughing. “We hold hands all of the time. Most of the time now, so I won’t fall down.”
THEIR WORDS RIDE the familiar rhythm of conversation between couples who have been together for many years. They express the same ideas and sometimes finish each other’s sentences.
When Louise McCullough was in the bedroom, she found a silver make-up compact with an inscription, ‘“At Last” My Darling Wife, March 16, 1945.’
She said it was one of four gifts she has received from her husband in their six decades together. He doesn’t believe in exchanging cards or holiday gifts. “Anything she wants, she buys. Anything I want, I buy.”
Here, the pragmatic side of his character speaks volumes. He said there is no sense buying a gift that someone doesn’t really want in the first place. It’s clear that his wife is not enamored with this notion.
“I never get flowers from him,” she said. “I always hope I will. Maybe I will in March.”
The other gifts were a locket he bought her when they were courting and a mink stole. He also made a tiny tea set, about the size of a thumb, to add to her collection.
Despite the absence of flowers, candy and other romantic gifts, “I would say we are very romantic,” he said.
Louise McCullough said longevity in a marriage does not always mean smooth sailing. “We’ve had our moments,” she said.
THEY HAVE TWO DAUGHTERS, Carol Godding, 56, who retired in Seattle, Wash., after a career with the Boeing Co., and Nancy McCullough, 53, who heads up the social studies department at Gaithersburg High School in Maryland. The youngest daughter said she could attest to her mother’s statement. “Maybe the recipe [for their togetherness] is it’s an incredibly traditional relationship,” Nancy McCullough said.
Their father said marriages have their ups and downs. “And to last this long, there have to more ups than downs,” he said. “After 60 years, you kind of grow on each other.”
The pair brought up their children the old-fashioned way, using spankings as a form of discipline. “He was a stricter disciplinarian than I was,” she said.
“They still love us, so it wasn’t so bad,” Jim McCullough said.
In their early years, the newlyweds had their own interests. He would watch sports and she would go off with her girlfriends to concerts.
“Now he’ll go to more concerts than he used to,” she said. “He still won’t go to opera.”
“I won’t go to ballet either,” he said, grinning. “And I don’t go to the beauty shop with her either.”
They also enjoy traveling together, having driven to every state in the nation and to all parts of the world. “We have not been to India, China and Africa, but that’s about it,” she said. “We’re going to Portugal in October.”
Jim McCullough did his share of traveling during his 30 years with the United States Air Force. A retired colonel, he served as a command pilot. After he left the military, he took on a hobby. For 18 years, he made dioramas, three-dimensional pictures comprised of miniature objects used to recreate a room or scene, framed in glass and hung on a wall. The intricately painted objects are about the size of a fingernail.
They live at Falcons Landing, a retired officers and spouses continuing care community, and spend most of their time with other seniors. Because the number of widows outnumbers the widowers, they often invite women to join them on their outings.
“I’ve had harems almost, big harems,” he joked.
Jim McCullough, who took up scuba diving when he was 65 or “just a kid,” has been playing water volleyball twice a week with men and women his age. Louise McCullough enjoys water aerobics, but she hasn’t joined the volleyball team.
“Not yet,” her husband chimed in. “We have ladies in there who are well in their 80s and are having the time of their life. We feel younger, because we are doing that.”
“They play with a beach ball, so if you get hit in the face, it doesn’t hurt,” she said.
The volley ball team has three goals, he said. “The first is to have fun. The second is to get exercise and the third is to laugh a lot. It works.”
THEY ATTEND DANCES, but they said the days of dips and twirls are behind them.
Jim McCullough volunteers at the Falcons Landing woodworking shop, building furniture for a new chapel that is currently under construction. He also takes neighbors to doctor’s appointments. He built most of their first house and the furniture in their current home.
Louise McCullough serves on the performing arts committee, planning activities, such as theater, lectures and concerts for members of the community to attend. She plays the piano for the skilled nursing center and dementia unit. “This place is rampant with volunteers,” she said.
She said service has been a way of life for her, “probably because of the way I was raised. My mother did a lot of volunteer work,” she said. “It says in our Christian upbringing, you should help other people, treat others as you like to be treated.”
The McCulloughs have attended church together since they exchanged vows.
Her husband said he feels good when he helps others. “It’s very rewarding,” he said. “I just enjoy it.”
Before they moved to Falcons Landing two years ago, they lived at Lake in the Woods, Va., where volunteering was second nature to them, too. During their 23 years at that gated community, they received annual Distinguished Service Awards in 1993 and 2003.
Their son, Bill McCullough, 50, is a high level manager in the courier industry in Pennsylvania, supervising more than 100 employees in a stock exchange listed company. He said his parents always have been serious about their commitments, whether to their community or each other. “There were times that were very tough for each other, but they made it through it,” he said. “They both understand what commitment is and live it.”