As soon as he met Delores Clark, Bob Gipson knew she was the one.
Delores, then 16, wasn’t so sure. “I thought he was cocky,” she said about the 23-year-old fry cook who’d just come to work at the restaurant where she waited tables. “He didn’t even know how to fry an egg.”
“I made him chase me about five miles or so before he could catch me,” said Delores, now 86, casting a smile at her now 93-year-old husband.
On Tuesday, March 5, the Gipsons will celebrate 70 years of marriage.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Bob’s sister had bet that they’d last six months. But Bob and Delores knew they could go the distance. He knew he could trust her.
“I could make (money) and she could save it,” Bob said.
“It made a pretty good combination,” Delores said.
The young couple didn’t really go out on dates. They worked opposite shifts at Kelly’s Kettle cafe in Evansville. When Delores would get off work, Bob would get to work extra early so he could walk her to her bus stop.
Not too long after they met, Bob joined the Air Force. The couple did most of their “courting” through mail and the phone. For six months, they didn’t see each other.
Bob took an eight-day leave from his station in Wichita Falls, Texas, to get married.
“I told her … my first paycheck, I’ll send it to you, and you can come on down,” Bob said.
Delores wasn’t having that. “You married me; I’m going with you,” she told him.
On a Greyhound bus back to Texas, Delores carried everything she’d need to set up a home. It was Bob’s job to find that place.
“You figured it out,” Delores said. “I really think he borrowed money from his mother,” she added.
“My mother is gone, and you’ll never know,” Bob said.
Delores was still 16 when she became Mrs. Gipson. She had joined the workforce when her parents could no longer pay for schoolbooks and clothes.
At age 23, Bob had already traveled across the world and back from his native Kentucky. He had joined the Army at 18 and was captured during the battle of Prüm, part of the Battle of the Bulge. He spent several months as a prisoner of war in France and Germany before being liberated by American forces.
“And I was still more mature than you were,” Delores said to Bob.
“If we’d have $10 to eat on all week, he’d say, ‘There’s a little diner; let’s go in there.’ I’d say, ‘We’ll go buy a pound of hamburger and buns and we’ll eat at home.’ That was our difference in maturity.”
He could always manage to make a living, though, and he always took care of his family, Delores said.
Bob was a tool and die maker by trade — same as Delores’ father had been. He worked at several factories making vehicle and aircraft parts, including Hercules Body in Evansville, Indian Gear Works and Ford.
Being around livestock, though, was what put him at peace.
“I would have liked to have come out of the factory altogether and operated a dairy, because it is — there’s just something about it. You’re with animals, and animals get to know you,” he said.
He had asked a coworker about land for sale in Brown County. He told him about an old homestead on Oak Ridge Road. The log cabin there was so overgrown with wild roses and brush that they could barely see it.
Bob hunted down the owner through property records and offered him $500 down and $100 a month. Problem was, “we didn’t have a nickel,” Delores said.
They went to a bank to ask for a loan for the down payment, but were told that they couldn’t do that; loans were for things like taking a vacation.
“So we went down the street and said, ‘We want to borrow $500 to go on vacation’ … and they just handed it to us,” Delores said.
“We just lied a little bit.”
They had three children when they moved into the pioneer-style cabin in the 1950s, with a living room and kitchen on the first floor and one large room on the second floor. The house had no bathroom and it was only heated by a wood stove.
After coming home from work at 1 a.m. and finding the stove cold, his daughters bundled up in everything they could find, and no wood left to feed the fire, Bob decided to build something better. He tore down the cabin and built a three-bedroom Bedford stone home. It burned down in 1990, and was replaced by the modular they live in now.
Growing up, Dad was their idol because it seemed he could do anything, make anything, said Kathy Gipson, their oldest daughter.
She now spends much of her time with them, serving as errand runner, cook and beautician. “I can’t keep rid of her,” Delores quipped.
The couple aren’t making a big production of their anniversary. They have a great-great-grandson due to be born the same day. Their plan is to spend the day with the people they love.
Kathy said she often asked her parents how they went all this time without getting a divorce.
“Couldn’t afford to buy one,” Bob answered.
But more seriously, “No, I can’t understand if, a lot of the kids anymore, will get married and be separated in six weeks,” he said.
“If they thought enough of one another to date for awhile, they ought to think enough to stick in there and give it a fair try, give it a chance to work,” Delores added.
When he gets really frustrated about one of their “discussions” — like the annual one about how he “needs” a new truck — Bob will get on his mower for awhile, or take a ride on his golf cart all the way back to the edge of their property.
Sometimes, he is right, he says. He just doesn’t choose to tell her.
“There ain’t too much. We pretty much agree on most everything — most of the time,” Delores says.
Beside her, Bob just smiles.
“Until he wants to do something dumb. He gets some dumb ideas once in awhile,” Delores adds.
Like the new truck, for instance.
“And every year I say, ‘You don’t need a new vehicle,” Delores says. “That truck you have will last longer than you will. We don’t even need one.”
“Believe it or not, she got me a new truck for Valentine’s Day,” Bob says. “You want to see it?”
Kathy picks it up from a table. It is solid chocolate.
“He didn’t like the color,” she says.
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Married: March 5, 1949, in Evansville
Family: Four children, Kathy Gipson of Brown County, Debbie Lovett of Elkhart, Robyn Lawlor of Brown County and Bobby Gipson of Sellersburg; 12 grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren; three great-great-grandchildren and a fourth due on their anniversary.
Proud moments:
In 1971, Delores, Kathy, and Debbie all earned their high school diplomas together. Delores had left school for the workforce before finishing, then got married at age 16. “I’d never had need of a high school diploma, but I wanted it,” Delores said.
In 2014, Bob was awarded the Knights of the Legion of Honor medal, France’s highest military honor that can be bestowed upon a foreign soldier. He is now the last living prisoner of war in Brown County.
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