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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Love Story: Gehrs have had a lifetime of adventure

Sixty years ago Keith Gehr married the girl next door. It turned out marriage was just the first of their many adventures together.

They met in Hopewell, Virginia, in 1952, when Keith moved into the apartment next to Betty and her family. “It was a hot Virginia summer and some of us young people would gather in the evening and cool our feet in a kiddie pool,” Betty recalled. “One day Keith’s buddy wanted to go to the beach for the day.”

They asked Betty and another girl to join them and that one date quickly evolved into a relationship. “I knew I had a winner,” she said. “There was something so real about Keith. What I saw was who he really was – there was no façade.”

They’d both served their country during World War II. Keith served in the Navy from 1944 to 1946 and was stationed in Hawaii. Betty was an Army nurse. “I was turned down by the Navy because I had flat feet.”

Though she wasn’t in the Navy, she still spent a lot of time at sea when she and 572 other nurses were sent to the Philippines. The sea was so rough many of the women spent the voyage sick in their bunks. Not Betty. “Out of 572 nurses, there were only eight of us who weren’t seasick,” she said.

By the time she returned home to Virginia and met Keith, she was ready to settle down and leave her adventuring days behind her. It didn’t quite work out that way.

In their north Spokane living room, Keith smiled at his wife. “It didn’t take me very long to figure out that Betty was ripe to be an outdoors person.”

Betty shook her head. “He went about it very subtly.”

Keith and his dog Ghost would go squirrel hunting and occasionally Betty would accompany them. “He taught me how to use guns,” she said.

The couple married Sept. 11, 1954. Betty considered herself a proper Virginia lady, but she didn’t bat an eye when Keith suggested they spend their honeymoon in Wyoming, hunting antelope. Neither of them got an antelope, but Betty said, “I scared a jackrabbit half to death.”

Soon a baby was on the way. The state of Virginia schools was dire at the time, so the couple pored over a map, anxious to find a new place to live. Western Washington with its ample mountains, plentiful streams and abundant forests appealed to them, so Keith set about finding work there. He was hired as a chemical engineer at Weyerhaeuser, and when their daughter Sara was 4 months old, the family made their cross-country move to Longview, Washington.

Sara’s birth was followed by Anne in 1956. Son, John, completed the family in 1957.

It didn’t take Keith long to introduce Betty to a new hobby – backpacking. “There are great backpacking opportunities around Mount St. Helens,” he said.

Betty smiled. “He loves to explore and to try something new. I’d never even seen a backpack.”

Her husband shrugged and said, “I guess I’m something of a risk-taker.” However, he’d learned that subtlety was the key to unlocking Betty’s adventurous spirit. “The first weekend, I carried her pack and she went halfway in,” he said. “The second weekend she came with me and we caught a couple fish and ate them for dinner. The third weekend, I went back and retrieved her pack.”

Betty laughed. “And that was the only time he carried my backpack for me!”

But it was just the first of many hikes to the woods and lakes of Mount St. Helens. And hiking naturally led to mountain climbing. “I’ve climbed 80 percent of the big peaks in the Cascades,” Keith said.

And Betty? Of course, she climbed, too. “I managed to summit four mountains when I said, ‘That’s enough!’ It was not my favorite activity.”

She much preferred tent-camping with the kids on the unspoiled beaches of Neah Bay.

Keith proved to be adventurous on the job, as well. “In the early ’60s I got backed into patent work kicking and screaming,” he said. But after passing the patent bar exam, he found he loved his new job as a patent agent for Weyerhaeuser.

The job change proved to be providential during the recession. In 1982, he left the company with full retirement and opened his own patent consulting business. “For the next 20 years Weyerhaeuser was my principle client,” he said.

Keith has always been intellectually curious and became fascinated with Northwest native culture. His interest was piqued when a friend told him about a lake in British Columbia “where the fish practically jump in the boat and you can collect arrowheads by the bucketful.”

That fascination eventually led to a master’s degree in archaeology, and Betty was by his side all the way, even accompanying him on his field work. “She was my assistant when I did my master’s work in southern Oregon,” he said.

Betty laughed. “I counted and weighed a lot of rocks.” But she loved learning alongside him. “He opened up a whole new world for me,” she said.

The dugout canoe Keith crafted from old-growth cedar during this time can be seen at the Bonneville Dam Visitor Center.

They shared other adventures, too – viewing six solar eclipses around the world and enjoying the northern lights in Alaska for five winters.

At 79, Keith retired and the couple moved to Spokane. He took up voice lessons at 80 and now sings with the Spokane Symphony Chorale. Betty leads a volunteer group at St. David’s Episcopal Church. “We’re partnering with Linwood School and helping with school supplies and reading tutoring,” she said.

The adventure launched when Keith married the girl next door is ongoing. Betty, 92, said, “We’ve worked at our relationship for 60 years, but it hasn’t been a chore. It’s been powerful just being together.”

Keith, 90, knows he couldn’t have chosen a better life partner. He looked at his wife across the table and said, “Betty is God’s gift of grace to me.”