THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602080636
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
As Valentine's Day approaches, we are reminded once again that love in modern America is a many-splintered thing.
Divorce is up. Tandem parenthood is down. A good man/woman has never been harder to find.
Ask any lawyer or support-group facilitator.
But some marital relationships still not only endure but flourish. They remain actually based upon abiding long-term affection and mutual respect. In our era of Ewings, be assured there are yet Waltons.
Testimony to that comes with Love in the 90s: B.B. & Jo - The Story of a Lifelong Love (Warner Books, 108 pp., $14.95). Photographer Keri Pickett provides an engaging tribute in pictures and letters to the persistent passion of her nonagenarian grandparents. It's a beautiful bibliovalentine to the possibilities of commitment in the 90s and '90s.
On New Year's Day 1929, B.B. Blakey wrote to Josie Walker:
The new year is just upon the threshold. I wonder just what it holds in store for us, you and I? Happiness, prosperity, labor and service with each other and for each other, growth together and play and recreation. All of these things, I hope, perhaps seasoned with a few trials and crosses to develop us. But with courage we can surmount them all, I'm sure.
They would.
And Josie wrote back:
Who was it said, ``Sharing our joys doubles them and sharing our sorrows cuts them in half?'' I've tried it with you and I know it's true. Hold your breath, shut your eyes and imagine a great hug and kiss from your lover.
He did.
B.B. was 33; Jo was 32. B.B. was running a hardware business in Tulsa, Okla. Jo was a Disciples of Christ minister.
B.B. and Jo wed July 14, 1929.
They had the trials and crosses. The hardware business went with the Depression. B.B. went to work in the business office at Phillips University of Enid, Okla., and Jo became official hostess to the student center there.
They had the rest of it, too. There were three children and two grandchildren. One of the grandchildren was Keri Pickett, who moved back home to Minneapolis, where her grandparents retired, when she was diagnosed with cancer in 1989.
During two years of chemotherapy, Pickett photographed the daily life of her grandparents.
That was a spirit-raiser.
``They always maintained their delightfully romantic and upbeat attitude about life,'' she writes. ``They never walked down the hall without her arm through his. They never lost their love for books.''
Books are good for you.
``She always laughed at his jokes,'' Pickett adds. ``He couldn't sit next to her without touching her. They were frequently mistaken for honeymooners.''
Four years after her treatment, Pickett is happy and healthy. B.B. died in 1992, at the age of 97. Jo survives, having turned 99 last month.
``Bless his heart,'' says Jo of B.B., ``he was the nicest person I ever knew.''
After B.B.'s death, Pickett found a box of love letters that her grandparents had saved in the attic.
Here they are, with Pickett's portraits.
Dearest JoJo,
Read this before my picture, just as though I were speaking to you. Please.
I haven't one bit of news this evening. I can't even think of one tiny scrap of news to tell you just now, but I want to chat with you awhile. . . .
After B.B. had gone, Keri Pickett asked her grandmother how old she and Grandpa had been when they stopped making love.
``We never stopped making it!'' Jo said.
She said further: ``We made it up to the very end. I remember our honeymoon. He wanted to spare me, but I had waited 32 years and I wasn't going to let him keep it.''
Later, Pickett informed her grandmother that her mother was uncomfortable having that story made public.
``Well,'' Jo said, ``the book would need to have some sex in it or it wouldn't be natural.'' MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia Wesleyan
College. by CNB