Kansas Couple Recounts 69 Years of Love

Hospice Patient Raymond Schnirch had some advice for a long and happy marriage.

“Fussing and fighting is okay (but I don’t mean hit).”

“Don’t be a teenage daddy.”

“Don’t get married until you have a permanent place to live. Kids need to have their own bedroom so they’ll know where they’ll be the next morning.”

Those lessons and the experiences of two lives well lived are all included in the Crossroads Hospice Life Journal that was presented to Raymond and Evelyn, his wife of 69 years, and their family shortly before he passed away at age 91.  A Life Journal is a special gift put together that patients give to family members, recounting experiences, offering advice, and expressing love.

Lovingly prepared by Crossroads Hospice staff and volunteers, the Life Journals usually share the stories of an individual patient. But because both Raymond and Evelyn of Kansas City, Kansas were Crossroads Hospice patients, the couple recounted their life stories together for the Life Journal.

“It was an experience most people don’t get to have, to hear about your parents early in their lives,” said their daughter, Anita Yarbrough, who sat in on some of the interviews. “To hear them talk about their lives, they just had an awesome time even when they were facing mortality. It gave them some joy and it gave me some joy to watch them share their stories.”

The Life Journal recounts the story of a couple, both born under hardscrabble circumstances, who went on to raise five children and who had 10 grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren.

Raymond’s mother, pregnant with him, was being driven to a hospital in a wagon in 1924 when she could wait no longer, and they detoured to the house of a local midwife. As a young man, Raymond was unable to finish high school after he was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Corps.

Evelyn recalled for the Life Journal fun times as a young girl playing on roller skates and flying kites. But Evelyn, too, quit high school before her senior year to help earn needed money for her family. She worked in a factory making plastic hooks, but the determined young lady eventually went back to school and graduated.

Raymond and Evelyn met when both were staying at his aunt’s boarding house in Kansas City, Kansas after he returned home from World War II. Evelyn was working at Hallmark counting cards for $12 a week, $10 of which went to rent.

Raymond was blond, blue-eyed and handsome, Evelyn said.

Flirtatious still, Raymond said to Evelyn and for the Life Journal, “I just liked everything about her and I still like everything about her.”

The two courted by often going to war movies, a favorite of Raymond’s. In the Life Journal, the Veteran recounted a narrow escape after spending a night under a schoolhouse while Japanese soldiers milled about during his service in the Philippines.  A happier experience was when he surprised his brother, Victor, by meeting up with him and other hometown soldiers in the tropical islands.

Raymond wanted to wait until the Christmas holidays to marry but an eager Evelyn did not.

“She pushed me over the edge, so I had to ask her sooner to keep her from running off,” Raymond said.

“I certainly said yes,” Evelyn said.

“We stood before God at the altar and made a commitment. Marriage is hard work. Good times, bad times, we had the whole thing,” Raymond said.

And now the whole thing has been captured in a Life Journal for the family to share.

A Life Journal is a special gift that patients give to family members recounting life experiences, offering advice, and expressing love. The patient works with a Crossroads volunteer to collect unique life stories and photographs, pulling together irreplaceable memories into one volume that the family can treasure for years to come.

If you would like to help create Life Journals as a volunteer for Crossroads Hospice, or have an interest in spending time with patients or have special talents you would like to share, please visit our website.

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