ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 25, 1996 TAG: 9608260011
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BEDFORD
SOURCE: JOANNE POINDEXTER STAFF WRITER
Frank Dezelich doesn't remember all the circumstances, but he recalls sitting in a military barracks and selecting his first pen pal's name out of a Norfolk and Western Railway magazine.
He had no idea she would be his only pen pal or that she would become his wife. But for nearly three years after seeing her name in the December 1943 edition of the magazine, Frank wrote Lois Frances Sink of Route 1, Salem.
He was 21 and stationed in New Orleans with the Air Force; she was 16.
Frank had received a "Dear John" letter not long before he selected Lois' name out of a section of the magazine he got from a buddy from Petersburg. The section contained news about the Pocalier Club, whose members invested in war bonds and stamps, and included a list of members who wanted pen pals. Lois, a club member, wanted someone to write her.
Frank doesn't remember why he selected Lois' name. And he doesn't recall whether his buddy, who had worked for the railroad before joining the Air Force, wrote anyone.
But Frank wrote Lois once or twice a week about military life and about his family back in Staten Island, N.Y. Because his mail was censored, he couldn't always tell her where he was - in China, Burma, India or the United States.
Lois sent him pictures, including a framed one weighing about five pounds that he wrapped carefully and carried everywhere. He wanted a pinup, so she put on a bathing suit and stood on a rock in Mason Creek so her niece could snap a photo.
They had been corresponding for about a year and Frank was overseas when they decided they were getting serious.
Her friends used to tease her and say, "He's going to be an old man."
His buddies use to rib him: "You don't know what you are getting."
After he was discharged in Seattle, he took a train to Staten Island to see his mom, then boarded another train to Roanoke to meet Lois.
Because so many servicemen were returning home, the trains were full and he had to ride between cars part of the way. His uniform was covered with soot - "I looked like a bum," he says now - when he arrived in Roanoke to meet the young lady he had been writing.
Their first kiss was marred when a sickly pig on her back porch sat up and snorted. Lois, being a country girl, laughed. He doesn't remember the pig, but laughs about it anyway.
Frank was treated well on his first visit, he and Lois recalled recently as they talked about their upcoming 50th wedding anniversary. But Lois' parents weren't particularly fond of their youngest child being courted by a man from New York.
"Her folks were against me because I was from New York. A gangster," Frank recalls.
"They never traveled far and thought people from New York drank and stayed out all night," Lois says, "but when they found out Staten Island had farms
Frank, the youngest of four children of a widowed Yugoslavian immigrant, proposed to Lois over Easter 1946.
She made an unchaperoned trip to New York in the late spring to meet his family. On the morning of Aug. 31, wedding activities began. The wedding was Sunday, Sept. 1, and the celebrations lasted through Labor Day.
During the bride's dance, the couple collected more than $1,000. "The wedding cost $900, and we had enough money left over to pay my mother and some left for ourselves," Frank recalls.
Their anniversary celebration won't be as grand as their wedding, which featured 300 guests, two lambs on a spit and tables of food and music almost round-the-clock. But Frank and Lois have lots of pictures and stories to share. Today they will greet friends they have made during their 12 years in Bedford at a reception at their church, Holy Name of Mary Catholic Church. Next Sunday, on their anniversary, their children and other family and friends will gather for dinner at a Bedford restaurant and then cake and ice cream at their home.
Lois still has 169 letters, cards and notes that Frank sent her during their pen pal days and courtship. Because he moved so much, he said, he couldn't keep all her letters to him.
They have lots of memories of their 38 years in New York, where they reared their four daughters and Frank worked in construction, originally bringing home $56 a week.
"That was a lot of money then," he says. "Taxes were low; food was low; and the price of a car was two or three thousand dollars."
The couple traveled a lot, especially to what Lois fondly calls "polka dances" and to hear big bands.
But Lois remembers being homesick, too. She overcame it, though, with the help of her strong-willed mother-in-law, who came to this country by herself at 18.
"I figured if she could come here by herself and not speak English and earn a living and have a family, so could I."
Frank and Lois have had a good life. But "it has had some rough spots," Frank said. "We had our ups and downs. It's not a perfect marriage. I don't believe in that."
"We've had some quiet days, and then we'll start talking again," Lois said of spats. Once, early in the marriage, they had an argument and Lois threatened to leave. She asked Frank to get her bags from the basement storage. "He told me to get my own luggage," so she stayed.
"You learn to work out to the best advantage of both," she says.
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. It's not always been easy, but Frank and Loisby CNBDezelich are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary today.
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