Love Story: After five decades, still ‘scrappily and happily’ together

Some people have the benefit of growing up in homes with parents who have loving, lasting relationships.

Denny and Sharon Jones weren’t that fortunate. Yet despite coming from tumultuous backgrounds, in September the high school sweethearts will celebrate 54 years of marriage.

“My parents divorced when I was 4,” Denny said. “I did not remember my father. My mother remarried twice and my brother and I were raised by stepfathers. Neither one of them seemed to like us – or maybe we just didn’t like them.”

When his brother joined the Air Force at 17, Denny, then 12, went to live with his grandmother.

He vividly remembers his first sight of Sharon. On Aug. 22, 1958, he and a friend walked over to her house.

“I saw Sharon sitting in the kitchen talking on the phone,” Denny recalled. “She was wearing red shorts and a white blouse and her tan legs were stretched out on the wall in front of her.”

He grinned.

“I liked what I saw.”

Sharon was a freshman at Shadle Park High School, Denny a junior. She liked what she saw too, and the pair began dating.

“We’d go to the Panda Drive-In, weekly dances or the movies,” she recalled.

Those happy days were interrupted by tragedy. On May 2, 1960, Sharon came home from school and her mother asked her to start dinner.

“I answered in a snippy teenage way. She left to pick up my father and that was the last time I saw her alive.”

Her parents owned the Old Mill tavern on Argonne Road. Her dad was an alcoholic and had been drinking when Sharon’s mom arrived. He insisted on driving. He missed a turn on Upriver Drive and they were both killed, instantly.

Sharon, 16, and her two brothers, 14 and 10, were orphaned.

Denny was there when a state patrolman arrived to break the news. He had to go to Shadle and pick up her 14-year-old brother and tell him what had happened.

“It was beyond hard,” said Sharon. “There was no counseling at the time. My parents were both only children. We were so alone.”

She and her brothers stayed with her dad’s business partner for a time, but it was a bad situation for Sharon. When her great aunt offered to take her in, she was relieved.

Overwhelmed with responsibility and heartache, she broke up with Denny.

“I told him I didn’t want to see him. I couldn’t handle a relationship.”

Denny said, “I was broken-hearted.”

He graduated and went to work for Union Pacific, and a year and half after the breakup they reunited.

“I knew I loved her and wanted to marry her,” he said.

When they told their families they were getting married, no one thought it was a good idea.

“Sharon and I often quarreled even while dating,” Denny said. “Our families said we didn’t get along and we might not make it three months.”

They married Sept. 4, 1962, just months after Sharon graduated.

They honeymooned at the World’s Fair in Seattle and even had an Elvis sighting.

“He was there filming a movie and walked right past us,” Denny recalled.

They settled in north Spokane and soon welcomed a son, Brian.

Denny’s best friend was attending Eastern Washington State College (now EWU) and encouraged him to attend. At 21, he got a job as a janitor for Spokane Public Schools and enrolled in college.

He took heavy class loads and went to school year-round, graduating in three years. By that time another son, Greg, arrived on the seventh anniversary of their first date. Ten years later, daughter Beth completed the family.

For 31 years Denny worked for Spokane Public Schools. After obtaining his master’s at then-Whitworth College, he worked as a counselor for a time, but he missed teaching.

“My passion was in the classroom,” he said.

Sharon kept busy caring for their children as well as her grandmother and great aunt who lived at Riverview Terrace. In short, they formed what each had always longed for – a loving, stable home.

That’s not to say it was easy.

“We could conduct marriage seminars on how to live scrappily and happily ever after,” Denny said. “Those two words have defined our marriage.”

The quarrels they had while dating didn’t vanish after the wedding.

“We’ve always agreed on the big things,” he said. “It’s been the stupid, little things that caused differences.”

But they clung together and toughed it out.

“Neither of us had anything else – just each other,” said Sharon.

Denny said they’ve learned tolerance, forgiveness and compromise and both credit their Christian faith in helping them weather the storms.

Now retired, Denny, 74, enjoys golf and bike riding. Sharon, 72, volunteers as a docent at the Campbell House. Both enjoy their five grandchildren and their involvement with the Inland Empire Mustang Club.

Reflecting on their more than five decades together, Denny said, “I don’t know what else I would have done in my life without her. She’s my best friend.”

Sharon smiled.

“We have so much history it would be like cutting off a part of my body to live without him.”