Sixty-five years and counting

Published 4:58 pm Wednesday, December 24, 2008

It’s happening everywhere: Families are home for the holidays.

There are parties and dinners, gift exchanges and heart-felt greetings.

It begins each year with Christmas and continues through the New Year’s celebrations. It’s a happy ritual repeated each December.

Email newsletter signup

One of the key ingredients of the holiday fellowship is the exchange of memories of Christmases and other life milestones past.

Nobody does it better than members of the “Greatest Generation.”

Here are stories from two of them.

Ken and Eva Schara live in a comfortable apartment at the Chauncy complex.

Octogenarians both, the couple’s enduring connection is music.

Beneath a large painting of a close-up of Ken’s hands on piano keys (compliments of a granddaughter’s skills), the couple sat for an interview.

Ken is a native of Postville, Iowa, where he grew up on a farm with five brothers and a sister.

“I went through the ninth grade in school, and then I went to work at a store in town,” he said. He worked four years in the general store in the northeast Iowa farming community until an incident changed everything.

“I was working in the store, but I wanted to go to the Dairy Cattle Congress at Waterloo, but my father wouldn’t let me, so I left home and moved to Austin,” he said.

He took a job at the Hormel Foods Corporation plant and kept it for 39 1/2 years until he retired.

Music was a part of Ken’s life from his earliest days on the Iowa farm.

“My dad had a band in those days and we played at barn dances and house parties all over,” he said. Ken played the trumpet in those days and his brother, Charles, also a resident at Chauncy Apartments, played the trombone. “We only got $2 a dance,” he said.

When Ken moved to Austin, he found work, playing the piano in a number of local bars and nightclubs.

“After work at the plant, I would go downtown and play in the bars,” he said.

At the same time, Eva Lattin, was growing up with her family in the meatpacking town.

The Lattin family had moved around the Upper Midwest before coming to Austin to settle. Sioux Falls, S.D., Amboy ……. even a stop in Chicago, IL.

“It was the Great Depression and my father went where there was work,” Eva said.

When she graduated Austin High School, the most popular place for young women and eligible bachelors was the Term Ballroom, where Big Band and swing music were played.

Naturally, Ken and Eva saw each other on the dance floor.

“He was a real good dancer. I noticed that immediately,” Eva said.

“I thought she looked like Hedy Lamarr, the actress,” he said.

Their first date was a dance at the Terp Ballroom, where they returned many times thereafter.

“We just hit it off from the start,” Eva said.

Romance led to engagement which, in turn, led to marriage.

Pictures of their wedding show a beautiful woman with long dark hair standing next to a handsome man, looking calm.

They were married Nov. 29, 1943, at First United Methodist Church in Austin.

The couple have one child: a daughter, Deb.

Music that was so much a part of Ken’s childhood and adulthood in Austin carried over into the Scharas’ marriage.

Ken, the honky tonk piano man, and Eva, the tenor songbird, took their act on the road and soon became a hit at nursing homes in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa.

“We entertained everywhere,” said Eva, moving easily into the spokesperson’s role for the couple as Ken grows silent.

“We played in Austin, Albert Lea, Blooming Prairie, Hayfield and Iowa. Everywhere.”

The couple passed their love of music on to their daughter, Deb, encouraging her in school to take voice lessons.

It paid off handsomely: Deb excelled, broadened her interests to become a cheerleader in high school and college afterwards, entered beauty contests and pursued for a brief while a career in country music.

After 65 years, Ken and Eva can finish each other’s sentences, know when to speak and when to stay silent and always put the other first in their lives.

For all the young men and women who will make this Christmas the time to propose marriage, the Scharas’ have many stories to share of wedded bliss and the rest of their 65 years together.

They also have advice for young couples.

“If you get into an argument, when you’re married, the wife should never go home to her family. They should work it out together,” Eva said.

Ken nodded agreement.

“And never go to bed angry,” Eva added.

Ken nodded again.

“Marriage takes work. It’s not easy,” Eva said.

Ken nodded again.

Sixty-five years has been a journey, and its remembered past still is worth recalling at Christmastime.