Long way around

RATHDRUM – For Jack and Patti McElroy, love isn’t so much hearts and flowers as much as a circle. A full circle that took 44 years to complete. The couple met as high school juniors in 1956. They married other people, raised families, lost track of each other, and then reunited in 2000. Their love story began at Birmingham High School in the San Fernando Valley in California. Patti, then Patti Darr, was new, having moved from Wisconsin.

“I saw this drop-dead gorgeous, 5-foot-8 redhead looking troubled …I said, ‘You look like you’re lost,’ ” Jack recalled. He gave her directions to her class.

“I was a strawberry blond, but yeah, he’s right,” Patti said. “It was new and strange to me.

“I thought how handsome he was. Later on as I got to know him, I made up my mind, someday I’m going to get you,” she said.

The two became friends. Jack’s girlfriend, Pat Dakin, was Patti Darr’s friend. “You don’t fool around with your girlfriend’s friend,” Jack said.

The confusion of knowing two “Pats” led Jack to dub Patti “Sam.”

“I called her Sultry Sam,” he said.

“He was the brother I never had. I was an only child. He was my friend, my buddy,” said Patti, who later dated Jack’s friend, Gary Scott.

Jack dropped out of high school and joined the Army, which took him to Fort Lewis in Tacoma, where he fell in love with the Northwest. After the Army, he returned to Southern California and married his first wife, but the marriage lasted only three years.

Patti married Gary Scott, who joined the Navy. They had three children together. Patti and Jack kept in touch. One time when she was back in California, Jack called her, and they got together for coffee. The last time they saw each other was in 1967.

Jack’s second marriage lasted 13 years and produced two sons. He worked in the telephone industry as an equipment installer. He moved from Florida to Southern California to Dallas.

While in Dallas, he remarried his first wife and they moved to Atlanta, then Kansas City. The couple had one child together but the second time didn’t work any better and their relationship disintegrated into a loveless marriage.

Patti and Scott divorced after seven years, and she married Fred Brackner a year later. Patti had three children, Brackner had custody of his four, and together they had two more. Brackner was a salesman, Patti a stay-at-home mom.

It was a good marriage, Patti said. From time to time Patti thought of Jack and wondered what happened to him. “I didn’t know that he thought of me all those years. He didn’t know I had thought of him.”

The Brackners moved around a lot with his job, and they ended up in Longmont near Denver. They later sold their house to start a business. In 1990, after 23 years of marriage, Brackner died of a massive heart attack. “He died in my arms,” Patti said.

She got a job as a nurse’s aide, rented an apartment and got a cat. Her children and grandchildren kept her busy. It was a good life and she was content. There was one thing she was sure of. “I didn’t want an idiot in my life,” she said. She wasn’t looking for a mate, but did have a “God’s list” of what she would accept as a partner.

In December 1999, Jack got to thinking about Patti, not knowing that Patti was trying to find him. She’d sent out a bunch of letters to Jack McElroys, looking for her buddy. During Christmas 1999, Patti’s daughter promised to help locate Jack.

The only way Jack knew how to find Patti was to contact her ex-husband, his school chum, Gary Scott. “I thought if anyone would know, it would be Gary, her first husband because they had kids together,” Jack said.

“Gary said he didn’t know for sure, but she’s a widow, her last name is Brackner and she lives in Colorado.” Jack got online and found one “P. Brackner” listed. He called from work, got an answering machine and left a message. “If you ever were or are Patti Darr, I’d like to talk to you. This is Jack McElroy. Hi, Sam. How are you doing?”

“That was Jan. 7, 2000,” Patti said. “I still have the tape.”

Before she could return his call, he called again and this time she was home.

“At that point it was just renewing an old friendship, although a warm and fuzzy one,” Jack said. He was still married, but previously had decided that when he retired at 65, he would part from his wife.

Jack and Patti talked on the phone every day at lunch. “We had decided within a month, what we needed to do is make a life together,” Jack said.

“And we had not even seen each other,” Patti added.

Jack had planned a road trip for May 2000 to reconnect with his old school buddies. “Instead of going back through Denver, I went to Denver first and that was as far as I got.”

Thirty-four years had passed since they’d seen each other. They were both grayer and heavier, but their eyes were the same. “He had changed, but he was still Jack,” Patti recalled. The years had made them wiser.

“Had we gotten married when we were teenagers, we probably would have killed each other,” she said.

After their reunion, Jack returned to Kansas to make the break with his wife. Patti made plans to move. On August 16, 2000, she and her cat boarded a plane for Kansas City.

On August 30, Jack’s divorce became final and on Sept. 23 Jack and Patti returned to Longmont to marry.

“Seven of our kids stood up for us,” Patti said. “My kids were still afraid he was an ax murderer. But I knew Jack on the inside.”

“The pastor said, ‘You know, at this point in the service, I usually offer a word of advice. In the case of Jack and Patti, when they first met, I was only 4,’ ” Jack said.

Shortly after their marriage, Jack, 61, was downsized into early retirement and the McElroys began to look for their retirement home. After searching the Northwest and comparing the cost of living, Jack mentioned Coeur d’Alene.

Patti, never having been here, thought it was a good idea. Years ago, she’d bought a T-shirt at a garage sale that said “Coeur d’Alene, Idaho” because she liked the sound of the name.

She also practiced “creative visualization,” picturing the things she wanted as feathers that would float toward her. She was stunned to see the feather artwork on Northwest Boulevard when they drove to the real estate office. “It was a sign for me,” she said.

They bought a house and moved to Rathdrum Dec. 12, 2002.

Jack is vice president of the Kootenai Amateur Radio Society and works part time at Center Target Sports in Post Falls. Patti is vice president of the Rathdrum Historical Society and is a member of the Red Hat Society.

The McElroys say their friendship and love deepened over the years. “I’ve always loved him,” Patti said. “I fell more in love with him as I knew him.”

They were honest with each other and kept no secrets. “Our thing was, it’s warts and all,” Patti said.

“We’re 85 percent more alike (than different). We have more likes than dislikes. It’s always been that way.”

“Someone who has lost someone and says there will never be another one, I don’t agree,” Patti said.