Six feet apart, couple celebrates 68 years together
SASKATOON Dr. Jack Shiffman and his wife Bev Shiffman didn’t let a global pandemic stop them from celebrating nearly seven decades of love.
On Monday, they celebrated their 68th wedding anniversary while sitting just a few feet apart, separated only by a thin fence outside Bev’s home at Saskatoon’s Sherbrooke Community Centre.
Jack, 90, used to visit Bev, 89, practically every day, until COVID-19 brought heavy restrictions on who could visit residents at long-term care homes.
But the couple, and the Sherbrooke team, didn’t let that ruin their special day.
“There she is!” Jack said with a smile, reaching into his back pocket for a card.
“Do you remember me?”
It was the first time they’d seen each other in months. Bev smiled at the joke.
Their family brought a photo of them walking down the aisle at their wedding in 1952. It shows Bev smiling at the ground, not for fear of the camera but to keep rice tossed by wedding-goers out of her eyes.
“If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be here,” Jack said. “She worked to help put me through dentist school and has been with me ever since. So that’s my gal.”
Jack met Bev when he was just 12 years old, during a visit to Winnipeg, where he was studying for his bar mitzvah. He saw her from time to time after that, but never thought they’d be together until university, when their friends set them up on a blind Valentine’s Day date.
That night, they left their friends and escaped to a stairway, where they chatted late into the night.
“I remember we just had so much to talk about,” Jack said.
When did he first realize he was in love? Jack recalls a day shortly after they had started dating, when Bev revealed that her former fiancée’s mother had been calling her, asking her to reconsider their cancelled engagement. That night, she called Jack and told him she would stay with him.
“She phoned me and said, ‘I want to stay with you,’ ” Jack recalled. “And since then, there’s been no other gal.”
They married in 1952 and moved the following year to Toronto, where Jack began studying dentistry.
Unlike many of his classmates, he and Bev weren’t born with silver spoons in their mouths, Jack said. They had their first child, and bills to pay, but they never stopped supporting each other. Bev, a skilled typist and office worker, became the main breadwinner for some time, landing a job at a Toronto hospital.
“She ran the damn place,” Jack laughed.
They moved many more times: back to Winnipeg after school, then to Flin Flon, Manitoba, where they lived in an old two-by-four house that got so cold in winter that frost would creep up the walls if a certain door was left open. From there they moved to Chicago, where Jack trained to become an oromaxilliofacial surgeon, then eventually to Saskatoon.
Now, they’re only six feet apart. Gilles Turcotte, a recreation coordinator at Sherbrooke, said he was determined to prevent the pandemic from ruining their special day, especially after Jack asked for an anniversary phone call. Staff determined that a visit could be safely arranged through the fence. Sherbrooke pastor Mark Trew played gentle guitar as they talked, with family looking on.
“It was humbling, really, to be a part of that,” said Turcotte, who celebrated his own anniversary on the same day.
“Jack’s devotion to his wife is really powerful.”
It’s tough to be apart from Bev, but she’s happy at Sherbrooke, Jack said. He believes there’s someone, or something, looking out for both of them.