Love letters across an ocean
She has 397 letters. Exactly. Not too long ago, she pulled them out of the cedar chest where they had been stored with her wedding dress and his sailor’s collars for years and years, and counted them all.
Then she bundled them up together and tied them with pretty ribbon.
“I didn’t know what to do with them,” she says. “I was going to throw them out.”
Only, she knew that would be wrong.
The letters, each still in their individual postmarked envelopes, were written more than 70 years ago when they were young and in love.
Dino Sabucco is 91 years old now; his wife, Murph (her real name is Marfisa, but no one’s ever called her that), just turned 90.
They live in the same house in Welland they had built some 58 years ago when all that was in front of them was an empty field.
Here, they raised their boys, Rick, Brian, Gene and Ron. Ron died in 1983, just shy of his 30th birthday, of a brain tumour.
On this afternoon, Dino disappears from the family room and returns with a large, framed photo of his wife, taken on their wedding day. They married in Windsor in 1947. He in a black tux and white bow tie. And she in an ivory satin dress.
“Do you remember her in that dress like it was yesterday?” someone asks.
“Like it was the day before,” he replies, laughing.
This August, they will celebrate their 70th anniversary.
They met in Windsor in 1944. Dino had just signed up for the Navy and was in Windsor for basic training. He was being billeted in an old adding machine factory, on Some were high school sweethearts. Others met on a blind date. On a camping trip. During the war. At work. Even through their children. We asked readers to share stories about how they met their life partner, and more than 30 responded. Indeed, every story is different. Here, you will read about the love-at-first-sight story of Dino and Murph Sabucco of Welland. They are in their 90s, and will be married 70 years in August. a street corner next to a big field. Across the field lived Murph. She was 18. He 19.
One day, Dino was playing softball in the field with his buddies. Murph had just rode her bike home. It was raining, and she shouted to her mom, in Italian, “Should I bring my bike down to the basement?”
She spoke in a dialect specific to northern Italy where her parents had lived.
Dino heard her, and recognized the language. He was intrigued.
“I thought, I’d better get friendly with her,” he says. “I might get some good meals over here.”
Murph laughs. “Oh, Dino,” she sighs. “He’s always cracking jokes.”
“I liked her looks,” he continues.
Murph counters: “I liked his uniform.”
Days later, when he spotted her outside her house once again, he decided to introduce himself. They talked a few times after that.
And then, shortly after, he was gone. Sent to the East Coast, and then overseas.
That’s when the letter writing started — those 397 letters were written over two years.
“Every letter he wrote I answered,” she says.
In 1946, while stationed in Lancashire, England, he sent her a Valentine’s Day card. Deepest love always yours forever Dino, he wrote inside.
Murph stored it alongside all his letters.
“She kept all the incriminating evidence,” says Dino.
After the war, he was discharged from the Navy and returned to Welland. They continued to write, and take the train periodically to visit each other.
In Dino’s words, “One thing led to another and here we are, 70 years later.”
Truth is, seven decades have flown by, and they certainly don’t feel like they’re in their 90s.
“It’s been give and take,” suggests Dino.
“Never go to bed with a grudge,” adds Murph.
Dino smiles at her. Laughs. “Well, try not to,” he says.