Villarmas credit patience and forgiveness for 67 years of marriage

Verda Villarma remembers Felix Villarma winked at her from the bleachers at a high school football game in Idaho seven decades ago. She was a cheerleader.

"She was a good looking gal," he said.

"Every time I'd look up there, he'd wink at me," Verda said. That was the first time they met.

"He was very good looking," she added.

Verda turns 89 in June, and Felix turns 90 later this month.

On May 20, the couple will celebrate 67 years of marriage.

"It sometimes amazes me," Verda said.

Felix came down from Wrangell for college in the fall of 1950, at what was then known as Southern Idaho College of Education in Albion, Idaho. "I was a senior in high school. It was a teachers college, so it was affiliated with the high school. We had people that were doing their student teaching with the high school."

After the teachers college closed, Felix, who grew up here, came back to Wrangell to fish. Verda went to Salt Lake City for a job at a telephone company, and Felix went on to Idaho State in Pocatello. "We always wrote back and forth, and saw each other," she said.

In what "must have been '52" Felix got drafted, did boot camp at a naval air station in San Diego, and was stationed at Whidbey Island (in Puget Sound), before being "shipped over to Australia, Japan. And then we decided we were going to get married" in 1955, Verda said. "We got married on a 10-day leave, and then he went overseas and he was gone for a year. I stayed in Salt Lake and worked. He got discharged in May 1956 and we came to Alaska."

And that is where they've been ever since.

"Felix was born and raised here," Verda said. "So when I came up here, I didn't know anybody. But his family was really good and accepting of me, I have to say that, which made it easier."

Verda's family, on the other hand, "thought I was going to come up here and live in an igloo. ... When you're 20-something, you don't think about that. You're in love, and that's all you can think about."

As for what's changed, "Definitely the looks," Verda said, laughing. "No, nothing has changed that much. Almost 67 years later, we're still together. And luckily, we're both alive and kicking."

"She's a fine lady, you bet," Felix said. "She's a good cook, she's a good mother, a good housekeeper. Oh golly, you couldn't ask for anything better than that."

The couple have three children, daughter Carmen, the eldest, followed by sons Craig and Jeff. They have four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Verda said she thought, when they first came up here, that they'd go back down south and Felix was going to finish college. "He got to fishing, and then he longshored, and between that, he fished. We were here to stay."

"We just worked hard, the both of us, for 30-some years," Felix said. "She worked for 20-some years, besides raising a family. There wasn't much time for anything else, but we just kept on going."

As for advice, Verda said the first one is love. "The next is commitment. That's hard for people nowadays to be committed long term. We never thought about divorce. (It takes) patience and forgiveness. It's definitely a commitment."

There is always "the ordinary things that people go through."

"It's not a bed of roses, for either one of ya," she said. "But you have to work through that kind of stuff. ... You put two personalities together. There is always some kind of conflict. You have to go through all that. We just managed to get through everything."