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c2 tribune october 19 1988 romance is still alive in older adults by margaret stapley a 90year old man who was eagerly embarking on a new career in wood sculpture recently told a tv interviewer when you stop dreaming and scheming youre on your way out seniors are starting to question the old song when i grow too old to dream when it comes to affairs of the heart too they are not merely living longer these days a goodly number are realizing that youre never too old to only soi phoiogrcpheri koe yideovitlon rnoie torwra that frei ihm k owl loitfly wiih your child to capture fh cufeit imi alto awoilabu instant colour pcmport photo offer good through saturday oct 29 ntnuri si do totn on tickna fcotlyowvii wk cmd biotl blgjdi ouifnai tsttjovwi ocuj odtiicci kxioj fowtov trwfcjn otk oajjwval piiw in pothtmn si o4ctfj kjik poi tt no oppvmnj studios located in sears retail stores and in clearance centres in dixie value mall rexdale boulevard and warden avenue also in catalogue stores in morninsside in scarborough and galleria mall in toronto youf moneys worth and more dream that autumn and winter romances can be as sweet if not sweeter in some cases than the loves of spring and summer they no longer feel its ex pected of them to neatly fold and store away everything connected with youth when they reach the age once considered the cutoff point for the lovebug to bite its the stories of some of them 1 want to tell you about remember the key word here is romance read on peggy finds love with bill now we come to another peggy 67 and a widow for six years what might make the ins tant attraction she felt toward bill seem rather unusual to some is that she knew he was blind before she met him it was may 1986 and bill was peggy and earl find each other peggy sixtyfour lost her hus band to a long terminal illness just a few months before meeting earl when earl first came to the apartment building on elm road i opened the front door and welcomed him to his new home he didnt make a startling im pression on me at that time i was just being friendly says peggy she was resigned to living alone for the rest of her life even though her husband had made her promise not to go into a long period of mourning or to hesitate if she met someone she felt drawn to i wasnt too hopeful of that happening says peggy but fate stepped in and deemed otherwise a day or two after earl moved in he had to go out 42 solid oak pedestal extension table with 210 leaves and 4 sold oak chairs choice of styles 1 choice of colour finished solid oak bedroom includes dresser mirror right table head board armour extra solid oak table with 4 side and 2armchairs ique finished furniture 4981 highway 7 at bullock dr markham sale ends october 29th and asked if i would take his key to let in the carpet layers and a desk he had ordered afterwards we sat over coffee for two hours talking about every subject we could think of feeling relaxed and comfortable in each others company neither of us was look ing for a mate or so we thought earl takes up the story at sixtynine after fortyone years in a less than tenable marriage the realization hit me that most of the upper half of the hourglass was empty of sand separation was the only way out if i hoped to have any life at all but he as also resigned to that same life being one of celibacy and table for one please until the fateful day he met peggy on one of my trips from truck to apartment a lady with twinkly eyes and a saucy scottish tongue greeted me with a warm welcome i remember thinking to myself that i sure did like this lady but nothing more somehow the boxes seemed lighter and the world brighter after discreet inquiries reveal ed the lady to be a widow and therefore unattached earl asked peggy out for dinner or a show just for company of course and she said yes the rest as they say is history our relationship blossomed into romance an almost unbelieving earl told me we are so happy not as kids in the flush of first love but as an older couple who have survived rockstrewn rapids and finally come gratefully to calm waters peggy confirms this what we feel for each other may not be the fiery passion of youth but the steady gow of a welllit fire im so fortunate to have had the love of two good men in my life reaching for earls hand she adds i know well continue to be happy despite some catty remarks earl nods thats right there are some especially older peo ple who would like to see it fail but we both know it was meant to be and nobody can prove otherwise yes peggy and earl have had to deal with a lot of criticism from those who still look on a december love affair as nothing short of scandalous more so in their case because although they cant be married until earl is legally free theyve dared to start living together vv canadas largest chain of paint and wallpaper stores 245 stores across canada to serve your decorating needs colorhfourworm direct from our factories to you the experts choice your choice ihe 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must oe completely satisfied or we ww repixe tne product or give you a fun refund this guarantee does not include labour for application or installation lh xrw chefca your che v tat ox a new tenant in the seniors residence where i lived ex plains peggy we had heard that a blind man was moving in and some other women and i knew it was him when we saw his sister helping him locate his mailbox by touch this peggy too says she hadnt given much consideration before this to a new man in her life but as soon as she saw bill she knew she must have been waiting for him she thinks she surprised herself as much as the other women when she said right there and then hands off girls hes mine bill 63 and divorced for 14 years at that time hadnt thought at all about a new romance he had been blind for 10 years and figured it was just kindness to a handicapped person on peggys part when she introduced herself with open arms so to speak when i said that of course there was no way for him to know how beautiful she was he answered laughingly well i go by voices and the funny thing was that my initial impression of peggy was that she sounded sort of what we used to call butch because of her deep and husky way of speaking there certainly werent any sparks flying for me at first not so peggy apart from be ing able to see how handsome bill was she knew in her heart that they were meant for each other and was determined to put her stamp of ownership on him when even after he started to show more than just a friendly in terest in me he continued to sometimes get me mixed up with another tenant and call me jean i clipped a clothes peg to- his belt laughs peggy i told him what it was emphasizing the peg to remind him what my name was and if he called me jean one more time we were through she didnt really mean it he wasnt going to get away that easily but she wanted to give him the incentive to chase and win her it worked bill never called her anything but peggy again and it wasnt long before he said i think im going to marry you some day to which peggy replied yes you are how soon it was very soon by september of that year they were engaged but there were still some premarital hurdles to be cleared one of them was meeting each others family a somewhat dif ferent undertaking than when we were young and took our intendeds home to have them accepted by our parents peggy and bijll now had to seek the blessing of their own children bill was a bundle of nerves over this says peggy though wed both agreed that nothing not even our kids disapproval was going to stop us from marry ing he wasnt completely con vinced about me so it was with a great deal of trepidation that bill arrived at peggys apartment to meet the first of her daughters after the introductions had been made he felt the need to sit down and reached for a chair by this time he thought he knew the layout of her livingroom fairly well he misjudged and landed on his own seat on the floor peggy burst our laughing much to the horror of her daughter who couldnt believe her mother could be so insentive toward a handicapped person but as bill says what her daughter didnt know was that one of the things that i loved about peggy was that she didnt treat me any differently than if i had my sight i started to laugh too even before i found my feet and that broke the ice it was clear sailing from then on as far as their children were concerned but they still had to deal with the objections to their marriage by friends and acquain tances peggy most of all she was stunned by the number of people who on learning of her engagement to bill asked but why are you marrying a blind man im not marrying a blind man im marrying the man i love she told them this was usually met by blank stares or variations on youll be sorry at your age especially he cant do anything for you and youll spend the rest of your life looking after him that response brings us back to the all too popular misconception that older women marry only for security while older men par ticularly those disabled in some way marry to have someone to keep house for them bill gives the lie to latter ac cording to peggy he is very in dependent insisting on doing his share of the housework including the laundry peggy says she has come to depend on bill just as much as he does on her if not more she wouldnt dream of go ing anywhere without him i hope im not too jealous when he gets his new seeingeye dog she sighs hell be off to the store without me when were out of something and what i par ticularly love are our walks either holding hands for with my arm snuggled in his peggy and bill are one of the happiest married couples i know one of the similarities between those two and the other peggy and her earl is that while they are still relatively young seniors none of them were looking around with an eye to finding a new lifes partner it just happened story continued next week appointment debra weller patricia pappas publisher is pleased to announce the ap pointment of debra weller as director of advertising ol ihe markham economist sun tribune weekender debra formerly of oshawa this week and the toronto star joined our management team in 1985 and has held the posi tions of classified telemarketing and print sales manager she lives in scarborough with her husband and four children