When Wanda and Bill Starkman first met and fell in love, they were 16 and 20. Bill noticed Wanda walking by the pool hall he frequented in Blythe, California, and thought she was the prettiest girl in town and asked her out. They went on a few dates and six weeks later, Wanda was sure he was the right guy for her. “He didn’t propose to me, I proposed to him,” she says. “Besides, I was the youngest in my family, ready to get out and see the world. But I was barely 16. Bill even had to sign for my driver’s license.”
A few weeks after they married, Uncle Sam sent a letter telling Bill he was being drafted into the Army to help fight the Korean War. Bill ended up staying stateside after a truck accident during basic training injured his back and a case of the measles kept him from being deployed with his platoon. They made him a cook for the officers instead and Wanda moved on base with him at Fort Ord in Salinas, where their first son was born. “Bill was a good cook and his best friend was a baker. We ate really well during those days,” she adds.
After his stint in the Army ended, the family returned to Blythe to take over the family’s alfalfa farm. “Bill and I did the baling, while our oldest son cut the hay, our youngest son lifted the bales and our daughter raked the hay into rows,” Wanda recalls. “It was a family affair.” They liked visiting Prescott, riding motorcycles, and camping while Bill stopped by to get medical work done at the VA.
Life took a toll on their marriage and they divorced and went their separate ways. Then Wanda fell in love with a cowboy and married again. “You gotta watch out for them cowboys,” Bill adds, “they’ll come riding in.”
Bill remarried too and moved to Prescott Valley to be closer to the VA as his medical needs grew. He got his master gardener certification there and managed the large greenhouses on the grounds–two acres of gardens the veterans on site could use to grow fruits and vegetables plus one of the largest orchid collections in the area.
In their eighties, they both ended up single again. When Wanda needed a place to stay after a hospitalization, Bill offered the spare room in his Prescott Valley home. As his back injury from his Army days took a toll on his health, Wanda stepped in as his caregiver. When his care needs got too high for her to manage, he moved into a shared room nearby at the long-term care in Good Samaritan. Wanda would visit him there to cheer him up and keep him company. After spending so much time together, she asked him to marry her again. “I told her I’d think it over,” Bill says, laughing.
They asked Administrator Trevor Guthmiller if it would be okay to hold a wedding in the facility’s chapel when their daughter came for Thanksgiving to visit. “That was all the inspiration we needed to spiff it up,” Guthmiller said. The staff updated the altar and put some stained-glass artwork on the walls to make the room look more like a church. Wanda donated a couple of faith-based paintings she had made.
Now at 87 and 91, they’re newlyweds again. “I married my first ex-husband,” Wanda says with a smile. She’s busy hanging up Bill’s clothes in the private room he’s moved into at the end of the hallway. She points out the bird feeders outside the window and shows me the intricate diamond dot artwork she’s created to hang on the wall next to his framed honorable discharge papers and Master Gardener certificate. She’s glad to be close by and while they can’t live together, they look forward to spending their remaining years enjoying each other’s company.
They’re both sure the second time around will stick. “If you want to be happy,” Wanda says, “you have to be with someone happy.”
“Besides, I couldn’t find a better replacement,” Bill adds.
Wanda rolls her eyes and laughs. “Amen to that.”