Barbara and Richard Kent, who still lovingly hold hands, will celebrate 70 years of marriage on February 7. “They have been 70 wonderful years. I married the most amazing woman,” Richard said in a recent interview in the couple’s Waldoboro home, sitting high above the Medomak River.
They met at a young age, as their parents lived in the same town and “were real friendly,” Barbara said. Richard likes to joke that he was promised to Barbara as a young toddler. When Barbara was just a small baby on her mother’s hips, her mother pointed to three-year-old Richard playing on the floor and told his mother to save him, the red head, for Barbara so she could have red headed grandchildren.
Richard’s father owned the first IGA in Rhode Island. By the age of five, Richard was delivering groceries with a horse and wagon. He also helped milk the family’s 60 plus cows by hand. When he became old enough and big enough to see over the dashboard of his father’s Model T Ford, he used it for deliveries. Richard made regular deliveries to Barbara’s house. “Every time I delivered groceries she hid behind her mother’s skirt,” he said.
One night Richard mustered the courage to ask Barbara out on a date. “I wanted someone to go rollerskating with, so I stopped and asked her. That started things out,” he said.
Richard had many odd jobs, one of which was driving a cab. “He would pick me up and drive me to work at the Outlet Company,” Barbara said.
Although much of their courting days is now a blur, they both fondly remember watching their first silent motion picture, which cost “only five cents to see it.”
Richard proposed to Barbara in the “love tunnel at Crescent Park. He asked me if I would marry him and I told him I would think about it,” she said.
“I saw her two or three more times and she always said she was still thinking about it,” Richards said.
Barbara finally gave Richard the answer he was looking for and the two were married on a Sunday in 1943 in a Baptist Church in East Providence, RI. Richard was 23 and Barbara had just turned 20. The couple used two ministers for their ceremony, a Baptist and a Methodist, because one was a family friend who always joked with Barbara that when she got married, he wanted to marry her.
The Kents traveled a lot in the early years of their marriage. Their birthdays are three years and three days apart, his on March 18 and hers March 21. One year they traveled to Vermont and were celebrating their birthdays with a picnic on Bear Mountain.
“Kate Smith happened to be up there and asked what was going on and we told her we were celebrating our birthdays. She sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to us,” Barbara said
“We took pictures and sent them away to be developed, but they never came back,” Richard added.
With no radio or television, the couple spent much of their spare time at family picnics and get togethers and birthday parties.
After eight years of marriage and no children, the couple decided to adopt a boy. “They told me I would never be able to have children,” Barbara said. Soon after adopting, Barbara became pregnant, not once, but twice and the family grew to two boys and a girl.
Times were tough and work was scarce, so Richard, like many men of his era, took work where they could find it. He spent two summers driving a tar truck in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. He later was a long haul trucker driving the north/south route for 42 years. He drove five million miles without an accident. He was nicknamed “The Deacon” because if he saw someone in trouble on the road he also stopped and tried to help, he said
While Richard was away, Barbara spent the quiet lonely nights hooking rugs, doing needlepoint, sewing, painting and quilting. She sold her handiwork at craft fairs and gift shops, including Raggedy Anne and Andy dolls. They became so popular she could not keep up with the demand. Barbara estimates she made 300-350 sets of dolls and said they were so popular because “you take them to bed and roll over on them.”
While working on the tar crew, Richard’s boss asked him why he hadn’t cashed any of his checks. He called Barbara and asked where they were and she told him they were in the cupboard. Barbara told him she didn’t need them as she was making enough money to get by on at the craft sales.
Richard built two homes in their 70 year marriage, the first in 1960, with the kitchen made all of wood. By the time Richard had finished the first, Barbara had hooked her first room sized rug. She meticulously hand died all the material for her rugs.
Barbara learned the skill of rug-hooking from her grandmother. One of her hooked rugs, exhibited at the Eastern States Fair in Springfield, Mass., took home a ribbon, despite being hung on the wall backwards.
“Her work was so good, they couldn’t tell which side was the front,” Richard said about his wife’s rug. Barbara’s handiwork is displayed in every room in the Kent household.
After their adopted son died in a hurricane, the couple moved to Maine to be near their other son, and Barbara started hand sewing a quilt. “I called it my nervous breakdown project,” Barbara said.
The quilt is made with 2400 hexagons, meticulously sewn together by hand. She entered it in the Cumberland County Fair and won first prize. Better Home and Garden magazine recognized it as the best pieced quilt in Maine. They picked one quilt from every state and took them on a three month tour all over the country.
When asked what the secret to their successful marriage was Barbara said, “We just seem to have so much in common. We get along and have never had an argument. We never raise our voices. Life is too short to spend it arguing.”
“It was always straightened out before we went to bed,” Richard said.
“We both stayed real active, in the church and her with the Girl Scouts and me with the Boy Scouts,” Richard said.
“We were always so busy; we were happy,” Barbara said.
These days the Kents three granddaughters, one grandson, and two great grandchildren keep them busy.
The Kent’s have witnessed many technology advances in their lifetime, including television, washers and dryers, computers, cell phones, Internet and many others. Of all the conveniences, Barbara said her sewing machine and refrigerator made her life easier. When they first got married Richard had to lug 50 pound blocks of ice up the stairs. “The refrigerator was quite an impressive thing,” Barbara said.
At 93 and 90, the Kents are in good health, although Barbara’s vision is now impaired. Richard, who can read the bottom line on an eye chart, offered to give her one of his eyes, but as amazing as the improvements in technology have been in their 70 years of marriage, it is not possible.
When asked what advice they would give to a new couple just starting out, Barbara responded, “Be sure you know what you are doing. Don’t jump into it without thinking. Sometimes people get married just to get married.”
Once married, Barbara said to “put your partner first and maybe he will put you first.”
“You’re going to spend the rest of your life with the woman you love, be honest with her. Never buy anything without conferring with her first,” Richard said.
Barbara said the secret to a successful marriage is “to be patient and considerate and be the best person you can be, and, as my grandmother used to say, remember only God is perfect.”
