Houlton couple marks 65th anniversary

The bright-eyed fresh-faced couple smiled from the black and white photograph. She was wearing a white gown of guipure lace; he, a black suit and a big wide grin. Did they know then that this day would lead forward to sixty five years with each other and produce a score of progeny? Some couples just know it is going to work. They knew.
    We live in a youth-oriented society. It takes courage to invite a spouse to be there with you in old age, doing the mundane tasks of the retirement years — tracking medications, attending medical appointments, and monitoring cholesterol-free diet — and to render it all with love.
Seven decades later the digital image shows the couple, Lou and Jo Curry of Houlton, smiling, waiting for the click of the shutter. He, in a dark suit, white shirt, snappy tie, cufflinks and a rose in his lapel. She, with a similar corsage of roses adorning a black and white hounds-tooth check, still elegant, still classy, each of them, after 65 years of marriage. This couple, married in the Faith, has five living children. Where had it all begun? How do you get that kind of longevity in the 21st century? What spiritual gifts were given to them that day so long ago that gave them strength to persevere throughout nearly seven decades?
Jo, Lou’s beautiful bride of 65 years, came from strong Irish Catholic stock and can trace her ancestral heritage back to the immigration of Irish forebears, escaping the famine of 1840s Ireland.
Daniel McGillicuddy obtained an allotment of Crown Land in the province of New Brunswick on May 31 of 1843. The lands were granted on the premise that these British subjects would provide immediate betterment of the lands. Twenty-two years later, enjoying a stable life, the settlers were finally in the position to erect a spiritual dwelling in their community. Daniel McGillicuddy severed a few acres from his property for the purpose of providing a place of worship for the Upper Skiff Lake Irish Catholics. During the late summer of 1876, McGillicuddy deeded a piece of land four rods by five rods for building a church. This church and land later became what today is known as the Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi.
Daniel McGillicuddy’s children and their children’s children all attended the little chapel on a regular basis, or what passed for regular, in an era whose priests serviced the outposts of rural New Brunswick on a fortnightly circuit.
The McGillicuddys didn’t have far to travel on Sunday mornings, living as they were on land adjacent to the Church grounds. And so it was that Daniel’s son Thomas took over the homestead before growing to be an old man and Thomas passed the property to his only living son of nine children, William.
It is William (Bill) who is the father of our bride in the story. Bill and Margaret had six children — Mary, Charles, Jo, Lou, Francis and Con . The eldest five were brought to the communion rail at the Skiff Lake Chapel under the able patronage of the Very Reverend Dean McLaughlin, a man ahead of his time. It was his marketing skills, enviable even today, that put the Skiff Lake Shrine literally on the map of the Eastern Seaboard.
Jo graduated from high school and enrolled in nurses’ training at the Madigan Hospital in Houlton. For Jo, the day she immigrated into the United States is defined clearly in her memory. December 3, 1941. Think of the magnitude of that date in relation to what happened four days later. Activity at the Madigan hospital reflected a country at war. It’s not too great a stretch to imagine how a young pharmacist at the S.L. White Drug Company met and courted the beautiful brunette nurse from Madigan.
Lou Curry, a son of Howe Brook, was a ray of sunshine, a jolt of electricity to the stoic, staid McGillicuddy family. Warm, friendly, outgoing, an extrovert of the highest order, he won the hearts of every McGillicuddy he ever encountered.
Lou’s mother, the beautiful Vivian Porter, born in 1901, married Louis Curry Sr. and, within the village of Island Falls, produced a family of 10 children — Audrey, Lou Jr., James, Everett, Joanne, Joyce, Shirley, Phillip, Phyllis and Dianne. Lou jokes that his mother was pregnant for 25 years!
Jo and Lou were married in, what today’s media terms, an international wedding on Monday, June 17 of 1946. The couple was married at Saint Mary of the Visitation Catholic Church in Houlton. However, the reception was held at the home of the bride’s parents, Mapledale, N.B. At the anniversary celebration, Con, one of Jo’s brothers proposing a toast, remembered that the farm site had neither electricity nor running water. Try putting on an event today in those circumstances!
Lou brought to his marriage the stable, loving, caring environment that he saw on a daily basis between Vivian and Louis, Sr. Devotion to God, Church and family were prioritized early in his life and Lou carried the continuity into his marriage to Jo.
The couple purchased a home at 12 Park Avenue. At their anniversary Mass their eldest son, Reverend Terry Curry, joked that the couple has never moved in 60y five years of marriage but their address has changed from 12 Park Avenue to 12 Randall Avenue. How could that be? The municipal fathers of Houlton, in their dubious wisdom, decried that there were too many streets bearing the word Park, thus theirs was one of the chosen to receive a new name. This, despite their street leading to a park.
12 Park Avenue saw the birth of six babies, Terry, (Rev. Terrence Curry, S.J.) Worcester, Mass.; Susan (Conlogue), Pittsford, N.Y.; Jane (deceased in childhood), Ellen, (Matt P. Libby of Libby Camps) Ashland; Michael (Lucille Dumouchel) Norwood, Mass. and Anne Curry-Smith (Mark Smith), Mentor, Ohio .
Three of Jo and Lou’s children created six grandchildren, Sara, Alison, Joseph, Matthew, Caroline and Tom, some of whom have produced a further five great-grandchildren — Jack, Kayla, Molly, Parker and Laurelai. Five of six grandchildren and all five great-grandchildren were in attendance the weekend of July 8-9-10 at the Mass and reception held at Cheverus High School in Portland — Father Terry’s old alma mater, as he not only graduated but taught there as well. Lou and Jo were gratified to receive so many of their family who came from Canadian points — Oakville and Oshawa, Ontario and Saint John, N.B. as well as points in New England — Maine and Massachusetts and other family from Ohio and New York.
And isn’t that what family legacy is all about? To look the length of a dining table the size of a lake barge and know that every person there is related to you by blood or marriage. Nineteen people were added to the planet because this young couple pledged love and loyalty forever. Not until one party is fed up with the other. Not until something better comes along. Forever.
The couple must have been asked countless times what held them together, what gave them the strength to succeed where so many others failed? Modest beyond definition, the couple give as brief an answer as possible, “Well, that’s just the way it was. You marry for life. “
In a long-term union, the ups and downs are countless, innumerable. Jo and Lou suffered the loss of a child. Can a marriage survive anything more devastating? On the split side of the coin, some of their most radiant moments as parents must have come when participating in the achievements, accomplishments and milestones of their children.
If they revel in the joy of daily life with each other, their children revel in the joy not only of having parents in a lasting marriage, but having both parents still on the planet and able to drive the 200 miles to celebrate with over 40 other McGillicuddys, Currys, and close family friends.
Anne Marie Murphy, a Canadian writer, has been published in Canada, Bermuda and the United States. Her work has appeared in magazines, journals and newspapers such as the Toronto Star, the Telegraph Journal, and, recently, in Maclean’s, Cottage Life and Canadian Geographic. She currently lives in Oshawa, Ont. with her husband, Jim, surrounded by her children and grandchildren.