Erma Welser fell ill with scarlet fever on a Tuesday. Three days later, the 20-year-old mother of two young boys was dead.

With the house quarantined, her 25-year-old husband, Clifford “Ted” Welser, couldn’t even hold a funeral for his wife of five years.

“I thought that was the end of the world,” recalls Ted, who celebrated his 103rd birthday a week ago.

After Erma died, the couple’s older boy, Keith, went to live with his grandparents. Ron, the youngest boy, stayed with his father, who moved around to find work.

“You did anything you could to make a dollar,” says Ted, who worked on the highway department for 40 cents hour. “People shared what they had with you. ... If you had something and your neighbor needed some, you’d give them some it. You shared what you had. Now, it’s not that way, hardly.”

The heartbreak of losing his first wife drove Ted to search for God. He became a Christian and started attending church services in Dorset. It was there he met Mary Flack, a West Virginia native whose family migrated to Cherry Valley when she was a young child. Although they had grown up just five miles from each other, Ted and Mary didn’t meet until he was 30.

Mary had gone away to Boston after high school and attended college with plans of becoming a teacher. She became a nanny, instead, and eventually returned to Ashtabula County. Ted says her faith attracted him to her. Mary says Ted’s good nature, fun-loving ways and little son by his side appealed to her.

“I like children and I liked Ronnie,” she says. “And my mom and dad took to Ronnie. They took to him like one of my own.”

After dating — going to church together, attending parties at friends’ homes — for six months, Ted proposed, or at least he “supposes” he did. “Something happened,” he says.

They were married in Mary’s family homestead, Aug. 12, 1938, a simple ceremony with just family in attendance. Their honeymoon trip was a visit Mary’s family in Grassy Meadow, W.Va. They made it in a Model T that Ted maintained with a “screwdriver and monkey wrench.”



Good health

This morning at 10 a.m. the couple’s Sunday school class at the Jefferson Church of the Nazarene will celebrate the Welsers’ amazing accomplishment of 72 years of marriage. Their daughter, Barbara Heath, said friends of the couple are welcome to stop in and share their congratulations.

The Welsers have lived in Jefferson all their married lives. Ted, who settled into carpentry work with his brother after World War II, built the South Market Street house that has been their home for decades.

Barbara Heath says her parents are in relatively good health, and with her assistance and that of a caregiver, Mary and Ted live independently.

“I could still be working on the job if I could see,” says Ted, who has macular degeneration.

They eat promptly at 7 a.m., noon and 5 p.m.

Ted usually takes care of breakfast. Meals on Wheels delivers their noon meal; one serving that Ted and Mary share between them. Mary  usually cooks the evening meal.

Their daughter says Ted has always been a “meat and potatoes” guy who likes eggs for breakfast and meat for dinner. She says her parents have always had healthful eating habits, which has helped with the longevity. Both had relatives who lived into the 80s and 90s, as well.

Ted does a little gardening, tomatoes only this year. Church work has been their other pastime, from singing in the choir to teaching Sunday school. They are the congregation’s eldest members.

Dependent upon walkers for mobility, Mary and Ted don’t stray far from their garage, where they like to sit in front of a fan on sultry summer afternoons and reminisce, watch the traffic and nap.

One of Ted’s favorite pastimes is going to lunch or dinner at the Austinburg McDonald’s restaurant. At 103, he appreciates fast food.

“You don’t have to wait for your meal,” he says. “And you don’t have to leave a tip. I’m a cheapie.”

They credit their Christian faith for both the strength of their marriage and bodies. Ted, who smoked tobacco as a young man, says God released him from the habit and put him on a path of caring for his heart and soul.

“I smoked and used the bad language like boys do,” Ted says. “One day I went down to fire the furnace, and God convicted me of that. I took the cigarette and my foul language and threw them in the furnace. The Good Lord saved me from that.”

While God has given the couple a long life together, it has not been an easy one. Shortly after Barbara was born, Mary noticed that she had difficulty holding her baby when she nursed her.

“I took her to the (Cleveland) Clinic and they located a tumor on her brain,” Ted says. “They said unless it was removed, I’d lose her.”

With the pain of his first wife’s death still fresh in his heart, Ted requested their friends pray for a miracle. God granted those requests, and  Barb says her mother has enjoyed good health since the tumor was removed.

The couple’s getaways from the trials of this world has been their church and a cabin on an island in Weslemkoon Lake in Ontario, Canada. Ted and his brother loved to hunt and fish in the north woods, and they eventually purchased the island and built a cabin there. Although it has been more than a decade since the couple have been able to make the trip, some 425 miles from their home, the family retains ownership of the Canadian vacation property and uses it several times a year.

It’s a wonderful legacy they will leave their daughter, 17 grandchildren (both Ronnie and Keith, deceased,  had children) and so many great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren, Barb can’t count them all. Their greatest legacy, however, will be their example of marital harmony and love.

“When you’ve been married as long as we have, your partner becomes your life,” Ted says.