February 14th will be “Valentines Daystar!” at Daystar Retirement Village. Three married couples residing there will renew their wedding vows. The Reverend Tom Scott will officiate, and a large wedding cake will be served.

The three couples are Elmer and Elma Johnson, Ramey and Barbara Duchscherer, and Peggy (Margaret) and (Harry) Russ Casson. The couples shared some colorful memories with the West Seattle Herald of their early years together.

Elmer and Elma Johnson

“I moved here in 1940 at age 20,” said Elma. “My idea was that we were going to be married on the 160-acre farm in Markham, Minnesota, north of Duluth, where I’m from. So we had to drive there. We were married June 15, 1941. My maid of honor was our chaperone, so no hanky panky.”

“She came back with us, too,” said Elmer, 90, with a trace of disbelief in his tone.

“It shocked us,” Elma said. “On the way back we stayed at a Yellowstone Park cabin. We had curtains to separate us from her. We were just getting into bed, and the bed fell down onto the floor and that was really funny. She could hear us laughing.”

“I had a business here for 40 years, West Seattle Hardwood Floor Company,” said Elmer, whose parents came to America from in Finland. “I bought a building in the ‘70’s when it was the Unitarian Church, built in 1906. I turned the basement into my shop. I had 17 guys working for me at one time. When carpet started coming in I said, ‘That’s the end of it.’ My bookkeeper (Elma) said, ‘Now we retire.’”

They renewed their vows once before as they wanted to be officially married in a church.

“I got back into my original wedding dress,” she recalled. “But I had to take it in 3 inches. I gave it to my granddaughter who used it at her wedding.”

Ramey and Barbara Duchscherer

“We were married October 5, 1949,” said Barbara. “We grew up on farms near Napoleon, North Dakota.

“Our wedding started at church at 10 in the morning,” she said. We had a big luncheon with chicken noodle soup and chicken, then danced. Our pictures were taken at 3:00 p.m. Then we came back and danced until dinner at 6:00 p.m. Dinner was potato salad, sausage, all that good stuff. Then we drove 18 miles to town for the wedding dance in a bigger hall. There were lots of dances in those days, the waltz, polkas, shadish, the chicken dance.”

“It went till 3:30 the next morning,” recalled Elmer, 81. “Then the honeymoon- going out and start picking corn. We leased 400 acres.”

They grew corn, wheat, barley, flax, and oats.

“We both milked the cows,” he continued. “The cat was always waiting a ways away to get a squirt of that sweet warm milk.”

They moved to West Seattle in August, 1961, and bought a house on California Avenue. Ramey worked at the Shell Station on 35th and Holden, now a condo building. They bought old cars, fixed them up and sold them on the side. Semi-retired, Ramey delivered medicine for Westside Pharmacy for nine years and worked for owner Michael Ng until it closed last September.

Peggy, and (Harry) Russ Casson

Both met at Whitman College as friends.

“Peggy dated Batman in college, Bill Anderson (known to most as Adam West.) She used to ride around with him in a Cadillac convertible,” Russ recalled.

“Well, we were dating,” acknowledged Peggy of the future Caped Crusader. “But Bill thought he was above it all.”

After dating in college and before marrying Russ, Peggy married her first husband and had children. She said he died shortly after the kids came.

Peggy and Russ had remained acquaintances. The Casson’s recalled when they became engaged.

“When you asked me to marry you we were on the beach on the Hood Canal near my house collecting oysters,” she said to Russ. “I don’t think we got any. It was too exciting. My kids were on the beach saying, ‘What the heck is going on out there?’”

“That’s because I was yelling, ‘Hey! Hoopdy-doo!’” said Russ, who worked for United Airlines and hired pilots and flight attendants. Their son, C. J. Casson is Curator of Life Sciences, Seattle Aquarium.

The Reverend Tom Scott is a West Seattle resident and a minister through the Universal Life Church.

“When we got married the minister was expensive and cranky,” recalled Scott, also a buyer for Bartell Drug. He said his negative wedding experience helped motivate him to become ordained. “Officiating a wedding shouldn’t be expensive, so I just charge a smile.”