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Thursday, April 17, 2008
When love begins with lemons …
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Becky Stein / Special
The recently reopened Chick-fil-A restaurant in Snellville hosted a 70th wedding anniversary party for Nelson and Flo McBride, two area residents and regulars at the restaurant. The McBrides were joined by their great grandaughter Macy Miller and 80 to 100 of their closest friends.
Ahhh Spring! The season of flowers, young romance, proms.
If you can get past the pollen you might find — as they say — “love is in the air. ”
So here’s a true love story— one that started with lemons. It has lasted more than 70 years.
Nelson McBride, 91, and his wife, Flo, 89, have lived in a brick ranch home in Snellville f or 21 years. (They spent 20 years before that in a home on U.S. 78 and 15 before that in DeKalb County.)
If you noticed a crowd Saturday at Snellville’s Chick-fil-A on U.S. 78, it was friends and family of the McBrides celebrating the couple’s 70th wedding anniversary - yes, 70th!
Nelson and Flo are regulars at the restaurant - so much so that everyone knows their designated booth, which was kept during a recent renovation of the restaurant. Restaurant operator Brad Spratte even hung a wall rack near the booth so Nelson would have a place to hang his hat. The party was Spratte’s idea and was given courtesy of the restaurant.
But back to the story.
It was September 1937. Nelson was a young man working at Curtiss Printing Co. in downtown Atlanta. Flo was young and single and hired as a proofreader — a job that required she read out loud. After a time, her voice got scratchy and her throat hurt.
She had heard that lemons would help and mentioned it to her supervisor. Nelson was asked to hop on his bicycle and pedal to the store for lemons.
Flo says she was always attracted by Nelson’s “happy disposition.”
“I worked on the second floor and I would see him. He was always laughing and carrying on a bunch of foolishness. And he sang all the time.”
Nelson, who is still quick to smile and laugh, said their first date was a double date, arranged because one of his friends wanted to go out with a friend of Flo’s. The friends didn’t hit it off, but Nelson and Flo did.
“The way he proposed was that if I could make us live on $15 a week, we’d get married,” Flo said. They married March 19, 1938, at the courthouse in Lawrenceville. But they kept their marriage a secret for more than three months, living separately until they could save money for a tiny apartment. The world had been through the Great Depression, after all.
The McBrides had five children — four sons and a daughter. Nelson continued at Curtiss Printing Co. as a purchasing agent until a heart attack in 1977 left him unable to work. Flo worked in the lunchroom at Indian Creek Elementary School in DeKalb County. Today they have 12 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.
The best times were the births of their children, Flo said. And they’ve had great friends all along the way. The worst times were when they lost loved ones, particularly the 1981 death of their middle son due to a brain aneurysm.
“There’s nothing, nothing, nothing that compares to losing a child,” she said. “A part of you is gone.”
These days, the McBrides enjoy going out to eat, spending time with friends and going to their church, White Oak Baptist on Martin Nash Road. (They also spend a lot of time going to doctors, too, Flo said, laughing.)
So for the obvious question: What’s the secret to a long marriage?
“It’s no secret of mine,” she said. “ … If you put God first in your life, everything else falls into place.”
Flo says she and Nelson never argued over or kept secrets about money, though they always have had to live frugally and budget carefully.
But they have occasionally disagreed, as she thinks most couples do.
“Anybody who says ‘we never had a cross word,’ well, I think that’s a bunch of bull.” she said.
Those who meet the McBrides might add a couple of other observations: they laugh — a lot — and are interested in other people. They stay active. And Nelson was quick to remember the details of when they started dating and how they met!
“They are a very special couple,” Spratte said. “They are a very loving couple … and they are fun to be around.”
And it all started with lemons.
Are there secrets to long marriages? What’s yours?
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