Tying the Knot Tight

Art and Helen Plummer have been married longer than most people have been alive.

They tied the knot in 1928, not long after Charles A. Lindbergh made the first trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Paris. A year later, Helen celebrated her 21st birthday the day the stock market crashed, setting the stage for the Great Depression. And three years after that, she gave birth to the couple’s daughter on the same day that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to his first presidential term.

This weekend is another big event for the Plummers: their 70th wedding anniversary. About 100 friends and relatives from as far away as Florida will gather at their Stanton home on Sunday to celebrate.

That has posed a bit of a challenge because no one is quite sure what is appropriate for such an occasion, and the etiquette books don’t help. The 50th is the golden anniversary, the 60th is the diamond anniversary, but what about those milestones beyond?

Mabel Cate, 81, who has lived next door to the Plummers for the last 12 years, complained last week, “It’s the only 70th anniversary I’ve ever been to. They don’t even have any cards for it.”

But she is determined to find a way to honor the couple, whom she describes as the best neighbors a person could have. “They are real down-to-earth people,” she said. “There isn’t anything in the world that he couldn’t fix.”

The Plummers, both of whom will turn 90 soon, return the compliment to family members and longtime friends. “We’ve been very, very fortunate,” said Helen, whose petite build contrasts sharply with her husband’s tall, lanky frame. Though 71 years have passed since he first set eyes on her, Art still gazes fondly at Helen across the living room of their tidy mobile home.

The couple met when they were both 18. He was still in high school; she was a student at the nursing college in Dubuque, Iowa, where they lived. Neither had ever been on a date. But when friends arranged a meeting one night, both of them readily agreed. They spent their first evening together riding around town in a bus. They went steady for a year, then eloped, slipping across the state line to Illinois to get married on July 14, 1928.

“Her parents were against it,” Art recalled. “They wanted her to marry a teacher. They said it wouldn’t last.”

Yet despite that dire prediction, the couple weathered the Depression, several wars, 13 presidencies and the advent of television, space travel and the Internet.

The beginning of their journey together was rocky, they admit. They had to keep their union secret for a year because Helen’s nursing school, consistent with common practice at the time, did not allow married women to be students.

But eventually they settled into their respective careers--she as a nurse, he as an engineer. And they started a family.

In 1929, Art helped deliver their first child--a son--in the bedroom of their Iowa home. Three years later, though, when their daughter’s birth was imminent, he called in a professional. To do so, he had to climb a telephone pole and tap into a party line to contact the doctor, who lived 7 miles away. The physician arrived in the nick of time--by horse and buggy.

The Plummers lived and worked in Iowa through the ‘30s and ‘40s, watching their children grow up, marry and move away--both to Southern California. It was a yearning to be closer to them that motivated the couple to move out West, relocating to Inglewood in 1953. In 1972, three years after Art’s retirement, they moved to the Parque Pacifico mobile-home park in Stanton, where they live to this day.

“It had curbs and gutters, and they delivered mail to the door,” Art quipped. “It was the only decent park around here.”

The couple find plenty to keep them busy. Art takes daily walks, surfs the Internet and fiddles with personal computers, of which he has owned five in the last two years. Every Sunday night he signs onto America Online for a weekly chat with relatives from Oregon to Minnesota.

Helen, meanwhile, plays cards with friends in the park and is active in the United Methodist Church of Garden Grove.

They dine out several nights a week and enjoy the company of friends and relatives, who say the couple are tops.

“They have better memories than I have,” said son Ronald Plummer, 68, a retired engineer who lives in Hawthorne. “They really amaze me with their stories of things that have happened.”

Carolle Aldrich, a niece of Art’s who once lived with the couple, says that she has rarely heard them fight. “A couple of years ago they were bickering about some little thing,” recalled Aldrich, 67, “and they stopped and said, ‘Oh, we shouldn’t do this in front of you.’ They never fought in front of us.”

The Plummers still don’t argue in public, though frequently they complete each other’s sentences. When asked to explain the longevity of their marriage, both became momentarily quiet.

“I think it’s independence,” Helen said finally. “I wouldn’t think of opening his mail, and he wouldn’t open mine.”

She paused, then continued: “Couples don’t try hard enough today--the least little thing and they quit. A lot of times when things seem like big problems, you think about it and it’s not as big as you thought.”

Smiling at his wife, Art added his hearty endorsement.

“It’s a case of give and take,” he said. “We never argued very long. You’ve got to depend on each other--you analyze the situation and just get along instead of fighting about it.”