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Marriage vows strong after 62 years
Anna Hancock and Harry Hough started dating in April 1946. He was just home from the war. She had come to Leesburg from her home in Bland County to stay with her uncle and find work.
They will celebrate their 62nd wedding anniversary July 24.
Anna isn't ready to say there's a secret to their long and successful marriage, but she said, "We would work together. In those days, we didn't have much money, and if we were going to buy one thing, we would figure out exactly how much we could pay."
If they could afford it, they bought. If not, they didn't.
Maybe that's a good plan, in a time when 41 percent of first marriages in the United States end in divorce – and the numbers get worse for second and third marriages.
Harry was born on Rockland Farm, the Rust family's estate north of Leesburg, in 1920. He walked to a one-room school near the Limestone Bridge, and then attended Lucketts, first for grade school and then for high school. He later attended Leesburg High School, on North Street, dropping out about 1938 to go to work at the Leesburg Inn.
Then came war. Harry was drafted in September 1942 and served in the U.S. Army in the Philippines and in occupied Japan. Shrapnel in his left leg at the battles to take the Philippines brought him one of his two Purple Hearts.
He had just come ashore on Leyte, he recalled, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur waded through the surf -- cleared by now of enemy fire -- and pronounced, "I have returned."
Anna Mildred Hancock, with her 12 brothers and two sisters, grew up in Bland County, just across the border from Bluefield, W. Va., where she was born in 1925.
Sgt. Harry Hough was discharged in 1945, after 39 months and eight days in the Army. Anna was clerking at White's department store in 1946 when Harry found her. They were married June 24, 1946, after three months of dating, in the Methodist church in Brunswick, Md., across the river. Too much paperwork for a Virginia marriage certificate, Harry said.
They bought a white bungalow on Belmont Drive in Leesburg 48 years ago and have never moved. Homeownership never would have been possible without the GI Bill, Anna said.
Harry retired in 1989 after 33 years with the state's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. They raised one daughter, Peggy Falzone, and sent her to Radford College. Peggy taught English at Loudoun Valley High school for more than 30 years.
Except for summer reunions with her family in Wytheville, Harry and Anna never traveled much. He commuted to an ABC store in Vienna for a few years, but home has always been Leesburg.
Congradulations on 62 years of marriage!
Carolynn & Mama (Called in to LTM)
Posted by S_Kmauk
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