A long and well-traveled life together

Wayne was waiting to see the Nouasseur Air Base dentist when he noticed a newly arrived and very pretty nurse on her orientation walk through the military hospital.

He spoke to a nurse he knew, who held a small gathering in October 1958 so that Wayne, a first lieutenant, pilot, and communications officer from Easton, Pa., and Gerri Blum, a second lieutenant and nurse from Abbeville, S.C., could meet.

Gerri and Wayne saw each on the small base near Casablanca, Morocco, every day without trying. Then an Army enlisted man launched a theater group. Gerri and Wayne joined the cast of William Inge’s Bus Stop, and daily rehearsals were a chance to really get to know each other.

Gerri is from the rural South, where her high school class had 34 students, everyone in town knew everyone else, and a good portion of the adults worked at the cotton mill. Wayne’s Easton High School was 10 times larger. The small northern city had a significant immigrant population and he frequently traveled to New York.

They shared an openness to meeting new people and trying new things. A month after their introduction, he invited her to a French restaurant, where they both ate escargot for the first time and loved it.

More dates followed, rapid-fire.

“He was so funny, and more important than that, he was very calm, and I just felt so very well taken care of and so comfortable being with him,” Gerri remembered.

“We found it so easy to talk to each other, and even though we were from different backgrounds, we just clicked,” Wayne said. “I had been saving up to buy a car, and right before the end of the year, I decided, well, there’s a better use for that money — an engagement ring and a wedding ring.”

Early on New Year’s Eve, Gerri made veal cutlets and spaghetti for Wayne in her shared kitchen. Over dinner, he showed her the ring from the post exchange and asked her to marry him. They kissed goodbye well before midnight — one officer had to stay on duty all night, and that night, it was him.

A few days later, the couple, who are now both 87, began work on what they thought was a simple plan: exchanging “I dos” at the base chapel. There was nothing simple about it: An agreement between the U.S. and Moroccan governments designed to dissuade military personnel from marrying locals also prevented Gerri and Wayne from being legally married on base. An off-base civil ceremony required a lot of paperwork, including copies of the marriage laws from their home states, financial statements, health reports, and the base commander’s permission.

Their attorney called Wayne to say everything was finally set and Wayne called Gerri. “Do you want to get married tomorrow?” he asked. “Sounds OK to me!” Gerri said, assuring him that she would be fine despite being on duty all night.

The couple asked friends Yvette and Irene — civilian sisters who worked on base and spoke French — to be their witnesses. On Feb. 14, 1959, a local official led them through a brief ceremony that the couple couldn’t understand.

“Every once in a while, one of the sisters would nudge us and whisper, ‘Say oui!’ ” Wayne said.

Gerri and Wayne figured they were married when their officiant shook their hands and gave them a certificate. Only later did the couple realize it was Valentine’s Day.

Wayne went to the officers’ club for a celebratory drink with friends, and Gerri — exhausted from her night shift and the big event — returned to her quarters and went to bed.

Gerri kept living in her quarters and Wayne, in his. They were married, but they didn’t feel married, Gerri explained.

The legal ceremony cleared the way for a religious one in the base chapel, though. She bought lace in Casablanca and mailed it to her mother and aunt, who sewed a wedding gown. Her mother delivered the dress to a South Carolina air base with a special request. A pilot placed Gerri’s dress in the bomb bay of his B-47 and delivered it to Morocco three days before it was due.

On March 21, 1959, the base hospital’s head surgeon walked Gerri down the aisle. The deputy base commander and his wife stood in for Wayne’s parents. Three nurses and three officers made up the wedding party. And the base chaplain — who happened to be Methodist just like Gerri and Wayne — led them through vows in English.

The couple moved to an apartment atop an ice cream parlor in downtown Casablanca. Gerri was pregnant when they left for a honeymoon in England and Naples in October of 1959.

A few weeks later, they were discharged and flew to South Carolina, where a combination baby and bridal shower was held for Gerri, and Wayne met his in-laws. They traveled to Pennsylvania so Gerri could meet hers, then moved to Baltimore. where Wayne worked for Westinghouse for three years and where their eldest child, Karen, was born.

The couple later moved to Long Island, where daughters Kathy and Alane joined the family, and then to Sudbury, Mass., where son, Craig, was born. The family lived there for 35 years. Wayne worked for Sylvania and Raytheon. Gerri worked as a school nurse and public health nurse.

“I need to brag on my wife — she got her bachelor’s, master’s, and did everything but her dissertation for a Ph.D. at B.U. — all while working and raising children,” said Wayne, who earned his MBA from Suffolk University at Boston.

In 1993, Raytheon asked Wayne to go to Munich, Germany, and the couple headed for what was supposed to be a three-month stint. “More than once on a Friday night, we’d decide to go to Paris for the weekend,” said Wayne. “We were trying to fit as much in as we could!” The company kept extending his stay. After a year and a half, Wayne was made a vice president and asked to open a subsidiary in Frankfurt.

There was more travel during the next two and a half years, including a 35th anniversary trip back to Morocco in 1996. Their former base is now Mohammed V International Airport, but the hospital building and the officers’ club were still standing, and their former apartment building still had an ice cream shop on the ground floor.

Wayne was sent on one last pre-retirement mission in Taipai, Taiwan, where Gerri became a tour guide at the National Palace Museum.

The couple retired to Anderson, S.C., so they could help Gerri’s mother, who was then 87. Twenty years later, they decided they should move closer to family members in case they one day needed help. With a son and daughter-in-law in Maple Glen and a grandson in Phoenixville, they chose Hatboro. The couple gather at least once a year with the whole family — which now includes five grandchildren. They explore the local area and they talk a lot.

“We not only love each other, we like each other,” said Wayne. “We will sit in our living room and have discussions — it’s an intellectual love as well as a physical love, and I think that’s very important.”

“We discuss all the forbidden topics — religion, politics, sex — plus some of the things going on here in our senior facility,” said Gerri.

They argue in the small spaces between their views — she tends to be most concerned about the social justice aspects of issues, while his biggest worry is business health. “But we try to say things in a way to not set each other off,” she said.

“I know without a doubt that he loves me, that I am the No. 1 person who he would do anything for,” Gerri said. “I just feel so safe and secure with him.”

The couple, who will celebrate their 64th wedding anniversary on Valentine’s Day, plan to take a Parisian river cruise and a Great Lakes cruise next year.