Barbara and Doug Crooks are celebrating 70 years of marriage this week.
The two Orillia natives grew up together on Simcoe Street as neighbours. When Barbara, 89, was a teenager, she was in a car accident that knocked her teeth out and scarred her face.
“She wouldn’t go out anywhere,” Doug, 92 recalled. “I had an old car and would say, 'Well come on. I’ll take you for a drive.'”
One drive led to another, and eventually, the friendship blossomed into romance which bloomed into love.
“I actually had a boyfriend at the time,” Barbara chuckled, adding: “Doug was interfering.”
After dating for a year, Doug bought a ring and drove Barbara down to Victoria Point where he asked her to marry him.
“My boyfriend at that time was gone away in the navy,” Barbara explained. “If I could have married both of them I would have. I liked them both which made it hard for me.”
On a late snowy October day in 1952, the lovebirds said their vows at Bethel Baptist Church. The actual celebration part of the wedding was held in Barbara’s family home.
“We were poor people living in the south ward and I was terrified,” Barbara chuckled.
“But it was a special day,” Doug added.
One of the most vivid parts of the wedding was when Doug’s car was decorated by family and friends.
“They tied a bunch of cans to a piece of rod,” Doug explained. “I had to drag it all the way to Huntsville for our honeymoon where we were lent a cottage for a few days.”
One year later, Doug and Barbara brought their first child into the world. They would go on to raise four children and have had the joy of being grandparents to 13 grandchildren; they also have 33 great-grandchildren.
“We just pray that they won’t all arrive for Christmas at the same time,” Doug joked. “They all come to see us and visit us whenever they feel like it, we are a very close family.”
Barbara says she and her husband have always had an open-door policy for their family. They said they are "truly blessed" to have lived a long life together with such a large family.
“We are Christians, which is the glue that has kept us all together,” Doug said.
“Throughout ups and downs, we knew to pray about things which helps keep you content, strong, and able,” Barbara added.
Two years after being married, Doug bought a lot from his grandfather and built the first Crooks family home.
“I had never built a birdhouse before that,” he chuckled. “It’s still standing, all though we outgrew it and built the house that we live in now and have been in for 60 years.”
Building a home together brought Doug and Barbara closer together.
“When Barbara was pregnant with our last child, she was up on the rafters holding the roof for me to nail together,” Doug explained. “We had to work together, or it would have never got done,” Barbara added.
The secret to not only their long marriage but their long lives has been their easy-going attitudes, they explained.
“We care for people and our family,” Doug said. “Now our family is caring for us.”
Barbara says a big part of marriage is being able to forgive easily.
“You are bound to hurt each other once in a while with what you might say,” she said. “Sometimes you have to forgive each other immediately, you can’t be holding any grudges.”
Doug agrees with Barbara and says it’s important for married couples to “be on the same wavelength.”
“If you are going to have a fight, get it over with and carry on,” he said. “You also need to tell each other once in a while that you love them, it’s something I didn’t do very often, but I should have.”
