Lessons in Love
You're never too old to fall in love—or too young to make it last.

BY JILL KRAMER

If you haven’t been lucky in love, Valentine’s Day might find you pondering just what it takes to win big in romance. The Pacific Sun decided to seek advice from the old pros. We interviewed three elderly couples, all residents at The Redwoods retirement community in Mill Valley, who seem to have mastered the art of love. The one lesson we came away with: It’s never too late.

St. Valentine must be Miles Durr’s personal angel. In all of his 78 years, he’s hardly ever been out of love. He recently became engaged to an older woman: He and Ethel Herst, 87, plan to marry later this month. “I feel like a bloody kid,” says Miles giddily. “This thing hit me like a thunderbolt.” When Miles falls, he falls hard—and he stays true no matter what. He was heavily involved with another woman when Ethel first caught his eye, and it was only after Nora died that he approached her. “All I could do for a long time was admire Ethel from afar,” he says.

He took up with Nora after the death of his wife Jane six years ago. They’d been married “49 years and seven months” and had five children. They met at a Valentine’s Day dance when he was 20 years old and fresh out of the Navy. They married two years later. He still gets teary when he speaks about losing her. “We had an agreement that when one of us dies, the other had permission to be with someone else,” he says. “She told me, ‘Don’t be lonely.’ ”

Shortly after Jane died Miles moved into The Redwoods, met Nora and plunged into a volatile relationship with her. Nora was vivacious and mercurial, a firecracker of a woman. Ethel, on the other hand, is more like Miles’s wife—quiet, reserved and thoughtful. When Miles teases her, she’s apt to respond to him seriously.

“I’m amazed at how this thing has blindsided me. It came on so damn fast—boom! It’s all your fault,” he tells her.

“Oh no,” she says. “It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just something that happened.”

Still, his sense of humor is one of the qualities she loves. “He’s everything a woman could ever want,” she says. “He’s very caring and kind and attentive. He’s very astute, very intelligent. He writes beautifully. He’s very political.” Seeing his opening, Miles puts in, “I think Bush is the east end of a west-bound horse.”

For his part, Miles was first attracted to Ethel through her art. “She puts her artwork on exhibit out by the front desk and I was very impressed with it and wanted to buy some and she said she didn’t sell it. It struck me that instead of being motivated by money, she was motivated by being creative. That made her interesting to me.” After a whirlwind two-month romance, he proposed.

“I was so blown away, I don’t even remember what you said,” says Ethel.

“Good,” says Miles. “Now I can embroider it some.”

Three of Ethel’s pieces now hang on the wall of Miles’s apartment. In one, a lone figure is seen from a distance on a beach. She lies face up on a pedestal, her long hair falling to the sand, a knife impaled in her breast. When she painted it, she says, “I’d had my breast operated on and I was healing on the beach.”

Both Ethel and Miles have had serious health problems recently—she’s survived three battles with cancer, he has a heart condition—and that’s one of the reasons they’re eager to marry.

“Caretaking is a biggie,” says Miles. “Having somebody there if you have a sick spell.”

“That’s what love is all about,” Ethel chimes in. “The love and the caring. It’s even more important for us than it is for younger people because there are times when we need someone to help us.”

For now, though, they’re just looking forward to sharing a room with a double bed.

“Miles has a list a mile long of things we have to do—get an apartment, get a new mattress. I burst out laughing when I saw that list, it’s so cute!”

“There are only 26 items,” he says.

“So every day now, we’re checking them off.”

“We need to find out if they have sheets here for double beds.”

Ethel hasn’t been quite as lucky in love as Miles. Her first marriage ended in divorce—a rarity in 1958. “It shocked everyone,” says Ethel. “But we were just too young. I was 20, he was 21. It just didn’t work.” She waited until their two daughters were grown, and ended the marriage after 20 years. She married more happily two years later, to a man 17 years her senior. He died in 1984, and she’s been single ever since. Her stepson, a rabbi, will perform her wedding to Miles.

Ethel and Miles both grew up on the East Coast. Ethel has traced her lineage back to a well-known 18th-century Dutch painter, Izaak Levi Gazan. Both her parents are descended from Sephardic Jews. She grew up in luxury on the Upper West Side of New York. Her father was a wealthy milliner. Both her husbands were successful businessmen. She came to San Francisco with her first.

She’d gone to art school as a teen, but gave up painting when she became a mother. She went back to school in her 50s and graduated with an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute, then taught art in the city for 15 years. She still hears from some of her students.

Miles’s ancestors were German and English. His parents were Episcopalians but he was never religious. His father worked as a manager for the YMCA, transferring every few years from one town to another in New York, Connecticut and Ohio. Miles joined the Navy during World War II, then studied industrial design and attended Officers Candidate School. He married Jane at 22 while he was still a student. When their first child was born, they were flat broke. They moved to Kentucky where living was cheap and he got a job as a janitor while he waited for a commission from the Navy. After serving two years in Japan, he got a job in his field and moved to California. He and his family lived in the same house in Fairfax for 36 years. That’s where he took care of his ailing wife, and where she died after a year-long illness.

“Miles needs to take care of someone,” observes Bea Lott, the program coordinator at The Redwoods. “Nora was a sensitive soul, and so is Ethel. I think Miles sees himself as a kind of knight taking care of a tiny butterfly. He’s very protective.”

THE REDWOODS IS hardly a hotbed of romance. The women greatly outnumber the men—six to one—and Miles appears to be the only single man there determined to give up his bachelorhood. There are only six couples but Lott says all six have kept love alive and kicking.

Dave and Cathy Dow meet me in the lobby and take me up to their apartment to tell me their story. Cathy, with her carefully coiffed hair and sunny smile is a social magnet. She can’t take more than a few steps through the lobby without being stopped by friends who want to pull her aside for a chat. Dave’s face is deeply lined, but his stride is energetic and youthful and he radiates goodwill.

The two have been blissfully happy together for 30 years. But they found each other only after decades with the wrong spouse. They’d been acquainted for many years through the Methodist church they belonged to in the San Fernando Valley. Their children were friends and went to camp together. Dave was a soloist in the choir. Cathy was everybody’s favorite confidante.

Like Ethel, they waited until the kids were grown and then ended their unhappy marriages. Cathy became single again about two years after Dave’s divorce. Both were in their 50s. Neither was thinking about finding a new mate. Cathy went back to college, became a teacher and then principal of a school for kids with learning disabilities. Dave, a controller at a bank, was settling into the single life, learning to cook and iron and fend for himself.

They started out as friends, seeing each other at church parties, talking on the phone. After a while, the phone conversations became more frequent and they began meeting for lunch. The relationship grew so seamlessly, neither remembers exactly how or when they became lovers, but they eventually left their old suburban lives behind and got an apartment together in downtown Los Angeles.

A few years later they both retired, bought an RV and went on the road. “We covered the U.S. and Canada, inch by inch,” says Cathy. They went from one campground to another, spending a week in each place—playing golf, going to museums, seeing shows.

“We’d stop at the local Visitor Center and find out what’s happening,” says Dave. “Whatever was going on, we’d take it in.”

“We have lots of fun,” says Cathy. “We enjoy being together. We’d rather be with each other than anyone else.”

“If we have company, that’s fine,” says Dave, “but we’d just as soon be together.”

Now both in their 80s, they decided two years ago it was time to slow down. Between the two of them, they have six grown children and seven grandchildren scattered around the country. Choosing to be near one of Cathy’s daughters because she lived in the best climate, they moved to The Redwoods.

Though they’re rooted in one place now, they haven’t slowed down much. They teach line dancing at The Redwoods every Thursday morning. They have a small electric organ in the corner of their apartment that both play. Dave is taking voice lessons. Cathy makes greeting cards. They’re members of Seniors for Peace, the antiwar group that stands vigil every Friday afternoon on the busy corner outside The Redwoods. They protest the death penalty and advocate for issues like affordable housing, healthcare and the environment. They seem to see eye to eye on everything.

So what’s the secret of their marital success?

“It’s been so easy for us, it’s hard to say what other people might have to work on,” says Dave. “Ever since Day One we’ve just never had any conflicts.”

“We don’t try to tell people how great it is, but it is!” says Cathy.

“It’s fabulous. People wouldn’t believe it, how good it is. We feel pretty lucky.”

“We’re blessed.”

IF IT’S A rarity for two people to find true love as mature adults, it may be even harder for a couple to keep love vibrant from youth to old age. Warren and LaVerne Uhte, another couple at The Redwoods, have clearly found a way. They’ll celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary next month.

They met as teenagers, LaVerne two years older than Warren.

“She picked ’em young,” he says.

“He didn’t impress me at 16. I mean that way,” she says.

“I worked on her a long time. She had other boyfriends. I took her to my graduation dance.”

“In the Gold Room at the Fairmont.”

She has a bookish look about her, and a no-nonsense manner. She sits erect in a straight-backed chair. He leans back on the sofa next to her with an air of gentle amusement. She puts her hand on his knee as they reminisce. But she’s not one for mushy talk. Asked what makes their marriage work, she says, “We got married with the idea that we were supposed to make it work. That was the culture that we grew up with. And we were both heavily into being church members and Christians. And somewhere along the way, I decided that was why I was alive, was to get as far as I could toward the Christian ideal of loving. And it’s not always that easy to be in a state of love and compassion toward anybody, and when you live with them 24 hours a day it’s even harder. So we’re still trying.”

Warren’s explanation for their marital success is quite different.

“She was a very understanding wife and a very good mother to our kids.”

“So I get all the credit?”

“I think most of it, dear.”

Is there still romance in their marriage? I ask.

“Absolutely,” he says with no hesitation.

“I’m very nervous about definitions. I really don’t know what romance is. We both have loving ways. He does things like turning the heat on in the morning so I can stay in bed a little longer. If that’s romantic, then we’re romantic.”

“We quite often sleep in different beds, but we usually cuddle together. And she’s still willing to hold hands.”

“Yeah, I’m touchy-feely,” she admits. “And people look at us and say, Oh, that’s so nice, so romantic. But we’ve always done it. We don’t even think about it.”

And how do they resolve conflicts when they disagree on something?

“Gosh,” she says and looks at him. “When was the last time we disagreed?”

PHOTOGRAPH OF ETHEL HERST AND MILES DURR BY ROBERT VENTE.

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