She had her eye on that very nice ‘cute sailor’
Marilyn Kirchner was enjoying a little girl time when she met a sailor in a resort town in Illinois.
That sailor, Thad Ostrowski, then 19, was sitting at the bar in the dance pavilion in Antioch, Ill., when Marilyn approached him.
“It wasn’t like, ‘Hey, what’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?’ She just said, ‘Hi, how are you?’” Thad remembers.
The wife of one of the friends with Thad had just had a baby and they were out celebrating the birth.
“There were four of us girls who had gone up for the weekend, and there were four of them,” says Marilyn, also 19 at the time. “We just walked over to talk to them.”
She was instantly drawn to Thad.
“Everybody wanted to meet a cute sailor,” she says. “He was in uniform and he was 6-foot-4 and 190 pounds, all in the right places. He had a nice butt — he still does.”
She and Thad didn’t dance that night. Thad didn’t know how then, though he would learn later.
“It was very casual and comfortable. It was OK for us to talk to them and they were very nice,” says Marilyn, who lived with her parents in Chicago then. “We sat there and visited and enjoyed each other’s company and I didn’t know if I would ever see him again. I just said if you want to call me sometime this is my number and that was it. I didn’t know if he would call me or not call me.”
Thad, stationed in Great Lakes, Ill., then, called her shortly after they met and she invited him to visit her in Chicago.
“My family was surprised when I said this man is a sailor and he’s going to come and spend the weekend,” she says. “It worked out. They liked him. In fact I think they liked him more than they liked me most of the time.”
Most of their courtship took place by mail; Thad was assigned to a ship that docked in Norfolk, Va., and it left port just two months after they met.
They had decided by then, however, that they would get married when he made it back to shore.
“With the Navy you never know exactly how their schedule is,” Thad says. “It wasn’t a case of me being indecisive. It was a question of the Navy being indecisive.”
They set a date they hoped would work and were thrilled when he made it back four days before they were to exchange their vows. They were married on May 27, 1950, at St. Genevieve Catholic Church in Chicago.
Because Thad didn’t have a driver’s license then, his friend Joe drove them to Thad’s hometown, Scranton, Pa., for a honeymoon so Marilyn could meet the rest of his family.
“His parents had never met me until they got there for the wedding. They sent his sister a week ahead of time, I guess to see if we were OK,” Marilyn says. ”I guess I passed inspection because they didn’t cancel the wedding. They were very old country. If you stop and think back to 1950, you didn’t just marry someone that you don’t know. We’re lucky that things worked out as well as they did and we’ve been happy ever since.”
Thad was only supposed to serve in the Navy for six months after they married.
“Then the Korean War broke out so they extended all the military people for another year,” she says.
Marilyn’s father sent her a plane ticket to fly home each time Thad’s ship went out to sea so she could help care for her mother, who was disabled. When Thad’s ship was coming in, she would go back to Norfolk and find a place for them to live for a few weeks until he had to go out again.
After he was discharged, Thad worked in electronic sales and engineering for Raytheon in Chicago — Marilyn worked there, too, for a while — until 1969, when they moved to Mountain Home and bought a small hotel. They helped start the Twin Lakes Theater in Mountain Home, having been involved with the theater community in Chicago, as well as a West Point parents group after their son was accepted to West Point.
In 1986, they moved from Mountain Home to Little Rock.
The Ostrowskis have four children — Diane Mills of Tontitown, Debbie Hawkins of Augusta, Ga., Steve Ostrowski of Conway and Paul Ostrowski of Alexandria, Va. They also have eight grandchildren.
They enjoy cheering on the Chicago Cubs.
“We are die-hard fans,” Thad says.
And they play at least one game of Scrabble each day about 3 p.m.
“It keeps our minds active, and it’s fun,” Marilyn says.
They live a simple life, she says, based on remaining active in their church, St. Edward Catholic Church, and enjoying each other’s company.
“We always wanted to be together. The last thing we say to each other every night is, ‘I love you,’” Marilyn says. “… with a kiss,” Thad adds. Marilyn agrees, “He still knows how to do that pretty good.”