Love Story: Beverly and David Vorpahl

Dave and I had been dating for about a year the night we parked in front of my parents’ house that winter in 1956. He was a 22-year-old medic at the Fairchild Air Force Base Hospital. I was 18 and a credit clerk at Sears & Roebucks Department Store downtown.

Like many teenaged girls in the ’50s, wedding bells kept ringing in my ears. Would Dave never propose? Time was fleeting. He said he loved me. Why didn’t he propose?

That cold night, sitting in the car, Dave said something about eating hot cereal for breakfast every morning for the rest of his life. My ears perked up.

“Is that a proposal?” I asked.

“Well, er, um, uh,” he stammered. “I guess so.”

Heavenly angels broke into an anthem of “Amen, Amen, Ah-ah-ah-ah-men.”

We married the following June and lived happily ever after for 63 years until he died in 2020.