Couple spent 63 years together after being married without permission
Despite tough start, young woman and serviceman enjoyed life together
There was nothing easy in the early marriage of Magdalen Staron, formerly White, of Stephenville and her husband, Andy Staron.
Andy was a U.S. serviceman at the Ernest Harmon Air Force Base back in the 1940s, and after he became smitten with Magdalen, the two got married.
The problem? Andy didn’t have permission from the military, as marriages between servicemen and locals were discouraged at the time.
After Rev. Walter Brennan, a friend of Magdalen’s dad, James White, ignored military protocol and performed the marriage ceremony at 8 p.m. on June 3, 1945 at St. Stephen’s Church in Stephenville, the couple kept the marriage a secret for a while, fearing reprisal.
At the time they wed, Magdalen was 21 years old and Andy, turning 26, was stationed at Fort Pepperrell in St. John’s, while she was teaching grades 1 to 4 in Shallop Cove.
When Staron finally ’fessed up to his boss about the marriage, things didn’t go well. He was court martialled and jailed
for two months until the end of the Second World War in 1945, when he was released back to the United States.
It didn’t go well for Magdalen, either. When the bishop of the day got the word of the marriage, she was let go from her teaching position.
“I don’t know what they were thinking. Did they think I was Mata Hari?” she said, referring to the Dutch exotic dancer who was convicted of being a spy for Germany during the First World War.
It was six months before Magdalen was able to join her husband in Stratford, Conn., and they lived with his parents for some time.
Magdalen, who turns 93 this month, said it wasn’t easy moving to a different country and being away from everyone she grew up with.
However, she said, her husband’s parents helped, because they were so accepting.
Andy’s dad spoke only Polish and his mother spoke only fractured English, but everyone got along.
The Starons’ story is now being featured on a storyboard, which is expected to be installed along the Stephenville Heritage Trail in front of the Zion Pentecostal Church, along with three other stories of unions between U.S. military personnel and locals.
Even when she lived in the United States all those years, Magdalen often returned home in summer to visit her mom, Sarah White, who died in September 2001 at the age of 107.
Magdalen still talks by phone on a regular basis with her brother, Ron, and his wife, Geraldine White, her brother, Clarence, and her niece, Sarah Alexander.
Staron said she has no regrets about her life with Andy, as they had 63 great years together. He worked for 30 years in a factory tool room, then with the town of Bridgeport for 20 years.
The Starons had three children — two sons and a daughter, with one son deceased.
Staron knows of a number of women from Stephenville who married servicemen, and said one of them, Rita Gallant, who lived in New York, was her best friend up to the time of her death.