Togetherness Keeps Happy Couple Going
Seventy years ago, Lee and Donna Carney bought two forks, two spoons and two knives. That was their wedding present to themselves. Utensils to eat whatever food they could find in 1930’s Kansas.
They were just 17 and 18 years old when they started dating on Christmas Day in 1930. Two days later they eloped, daring to start a future at the onset of the Great Depression and three-year drought that dried the Midwest into acres of dust.
They recently celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary with 64 family members, including their three sons, 12 grandchildren and 34 great-grandchildren.
“I looked at her and said, `Look what we’ve done.’ When we started out it was just the two of us,” Lee said.
Both from farming families, the Carneys met while commuting the eight miles to and from high school. Donna dropped out of school to take a housekeeping job and Lee financed his high school education making egg crates that brought in 3 cents apiece.
“Those were hard times,” he said. “There wasn’t one job in 1,000 for a kid under 18, but this kid had to eat, so I took a job doing something that no one else wanted to do.”
“Sometimes all we had to eat was dried beans,” said Donna, who recalled putting wet sheets on the windows of their two-bedroom house to protect her baby son from the persistent dust.
“We grew up fast, there’s no question about that, but that’s just how we did it back then,” Lee said.
At the urging of a friend, the Carneys - who had never left Kansas - visited southern Idaho.
“We went from starvation to paradise,” Donna said. “It was beautiful.”
A carpenter by trade, Lee took a job in the lumber business in Twin Falls. But it didn’t take long for their lives to head in another direction.
By the end of the 1930s, Lee was pastoring Church of God congregations and Donna quickly joined him.
“Everything we did, we did together,” Donna said. “And I think that’s what made us get along and enjoy our marriage so much.”
They furthered their educations in Portland before returning to southern Idaho to pastor and build churches.
“It is definitely a calling,” Lee said. “I didn’t come from a Christian background, but I knew as a small boy that was my calling, although I didn’t have an opportunity to do anything with it then.”
Donna was ordained in 1964 and focused on the church’s overseas missionary programs.
Both supplemented the meager pastor salaries with additional jobs. Lee continued building and working with wood, while Donna spent 19 years at J.C. Penney Co. in Coeur d’Alene and Everett, where she managed the housewares and curtain departments.
In the 1980’s the two began pastoring at the Lincoln Heights Church of God in Spokane before retiring to Hayden Lake.
The two didn’t take much time off, however. Within weeks they signed on to counsel inmates at the Kootenai County Jail.
“You can’t stop. What’s retirement?” asked Lee, who now is 88 and counsels several inmates daily.
The two find inmate counseling particularly satisfying, said Donna, who recently gave up her volunteer position to nurse an illness.
“Many people have said if they hadn’t been incarcerated, they wouldn’t have found God,” Lee said.
The Carneys also have worked with many Asian refugees.
“The kids would learn English in a year and they’d become the translators for their parents,” Lee said. “Then they would go to the head of their class in school and then go on to become successful business people.”
Lee marveled at the accomplishments of the Asian refugees, especially considering they had come to America hungry and with no possessions.
“But I guess we started with nothing, too,” Lee said. “And look at what we have.”
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Milestones is a column that appears regularly in Handle Extra. It explores significant changes in the lives of Kootenai County residents. If you, or someone you know, has reached a milestone, send e-mail to srorem@hotmail.com or write to us at The Idaho Spokesman-Review, 608 Northwest Blvd. Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho 83814.