Couple’s 71st anniversary, reunion gains national attention

     MARS HILL, Maine — The love story of a Mars Hill couple who celebrated both their 71st wedding anniversary last week and a joyful reunion of sorts after living apart for more than a year has gained a national audience and well-wishes from people coast to coast.
On Tuesday, June 24, 91-year-old Delbert McCrum and 92-year-old Wilda (Chase) McCrum celebrated their anniversary with more than 50 family members, friends, and fellow residents and staff of the Aroostook Health Center in Mars Hill gathered around them. The party followed a 45-minute limousine ride that took the McCrums on a trip down memory lane to spots in the community significant to their three-quarter century together as a couple.
The occasion was especially meaningful as it marked the first week the husband and wife have lived together in nearly 18 months, since Wilda’s health required a move from the couple’s apartment at Leisure Village in Presque Isle to the Mars Hill rehabilitation and long-term care facility.
The couple’s story has found its way across the country, landing in newspapers from Connecticut to Washington State and Indiana to Texas. Last Wednesday, a producer from CNN called the newsroom at local CBS and FOX television network affiliate WAGM-TV to request the story a reporter had filed the previous day after attending the anniversary celebration.
“We’ve just been amazed at how far and wide this story has gone,” Wilda said last Tuesday. “We’re just so happy to be together again. We never thought people across the country would hear about our anniversary.”
Not only have people heard about the McCrums, but they’ve sent along their well wishes and even made suggestions on appropriate gifts to mark the occasion. Visitors to Boston television station WCVB’s website, after reading the story, and the part noting the couple had visited 49 of 50 U.S. states, speculated on which state the couple had not visited.
Another individual commenting on the story noted, “I wish they mentioned which state they missed and find a way to make it happen!”
The comments were the topic of discussion among those gathered at the celebration June 24, where guests who didn’t know or hadn’t figured the missing state was Hawaii, were told as such by the McCrums. The conversation inspired some family members to hint at a possible future gathering in the couple’s honor that might have a decidedly tropical theme.