Scott Bremner

I’d like to tell you a story.

It’s about a secretary from Ellwood City and a guy out of the Air Force from Ambridge.

She perhaps a bit less outgoing than her more flamboyant older sister; he something of a James Dean wannabe, seen at times in white tee shirt with a pack of Pall Malls rolled up in a sleeve.

They met on a dance floor outside Pittsburgh, courted and fell in love.

Eventually they decided to marry, two souls now on a singular path.

They bought a brand new brick home in the subdivided hills over his hometown, and worried at night if they would ever pay off the $14,000 mortgage.

She stayed home to start their family, and like many men in the Pittsburgh area in those days, he went to work in the steel mills.

But he wanted something more for his life, and even then the winds of change were blowing that would within years shut down the blast furnaces and cool the magma that rolled down the banks of the Ohio River.

So with his young wife and even younger son and daughter to see him off, he went to the train station and headed to New York City for two weeks of training to become an insurance agent.

She wanted more too, so as the kids got older she returned to the workforce, landing a job with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

As the American steel industry collapsed and the jobless rate skyrocketed to 23% in some communities, she became a claims interviewer with the Bureau of Unemployment Security taking compensation claims.

They went to church Sunday mornings.

They went to her mother’s house Sunday afternoons.

He coached and taught his son baseball and a love for Pittsburgh sports, especially the Steelers and Pirates, listening to Myron Cope for the former and Bob Prince the latter.

And they taught a strong work ethic, making sure their son’s childhood came complete with paper routes and fast food jobs.

“You can use your back or you can use your head,” he would say, having done both.

As you celebrate Valentine’s Day this week, my parents Peg and Bill Bremner will be celebrating 50 years of marriage.

They were wed February 14, 1958.

This weekend the extended family will gather for dinner, to celebrate the two lasting legacies of that union.

The first: the children and grandchildren who will fill those tables.

The second: the fact that they put up with each other for five decades.

I hope you spend this Valentine’s Day with someone with whom you wouldn’t mind spending 50 years.

I know I will.