Reunited after 50 years, couple say, ‘I do’
Jennifer Meyerink says it was her brother, who worked at the U.S. Navy station in Trinidad and Tobago, who introduced her to Stephen Walbert, who worked for the admiral and was a disc jockey on the base.
She remembers Walbert being a regular at her family’s home and the feelings she had for him.
Five decades later, sitting in Walbert’s hospital room at Rochester General Hospital, their fingers intertwined and Walbert stroking her arm and caressing her chin, the details of their first meeting are lost to time.
Their lifetime spent apart will dissolve into whatever time Walbert, 73, has left, as he — and his new wife — deal with his leukemia. “I have a firm belief — one day at a time,” Walbert says. “That’s the way you’ve got to live.”
City Clerk Hazel Washington officiated Monday as the couple exchanged vows and rings. Walbert and his wife are big Elvis fans, and the bridegroom wore a black Elvis suit with a purple scarf. Walbert’s son, Stephen II, and Meyerink’s younger sister, Azora Schinkel, stood up for them. Her parents viewed the ceremony via Skype from their home outside Toronto. Several members of Walbert’s care team bore witness.
“We thought about each other when we were listening to oldies but goodies radio stations,” Walbert says.
When he was on the island, he says, he would dedicate songs to Jenny and her family. Upon his discharge from the service, he gave her his dog tag and promised he would return.
“It was teenage love,” he says. “Puppy love. It was that kind of love. It was a flame that started. A flame that I hope a lot of you young people experience. I call it the eternal flame of true love.”
They went on to live separate lives. Meyerink’s family moved to Oakville, Ontario, Canada, and she became a nurse. Each married, and their spouses have since died.
“Fate opened the door after all those years,” he says.
After Meyerink’s husband died, her sister found Walbert on Facebook. She set it up for her to email Walbert, who was retired and living in Wisconsin. They reunited in 2015. As they recount their parting and reunion, Meyerink, 72, holds Walbert’s hand or rests her hand gently on his leg.
“I was elated,” Meyerink says about seeing him again. “I never stopped loving him.”
She kept Walbert’s dog tag in a piece of Samsonite luggage. She gave it back to him, and he gave her an engagement ring. He wore the dog tag at the wedding.
This week, Walbert and his family will decide whether to continue treatment or choose hospice care. Walbert says the leukemia diagnosis was a curveball, but he is encouraged.
“I haven’t given up hope on myself yet,” he says. “I never will. But I have her back. And that gives me all the strength I need to get through the rest of my life.”