Arlington Hts. couple reflect on 63 years of marriage
As Valentine’s Day approaches, love is in the air. February is the second most popular month for couples to become engaged, according to The 2010 Knot Real Wedding Survey by TheKnot.com. But how many couples will still be together in 20 years or more? What does it take to make an enduring partnership?
For Bud and June Shelley, who have been married 63 years and live at The Moorings of Arlington Heights, shared values, goals and friendship seem to be what makes it work. They came from similar backgrounds — families without a lot of money who lived through The Great Depression and World War II. Their upbringing instilled a lifelong habit of hard work and resourcefulness.
June and Bud lived in a Chicago apartment for nine years. June had bachelor’s degrees in Fine Arts and Art Education from the School of the Art Institute, and later a master’s in Art History from Northwestern University. Bud was an industrial arts teacher. They took turns working whenever the other was attending school.
In the beginning, they both worked for the Chicago Park District. Bud taught wood shop and June taught arts and crafts.
“If I needed a tool for my art classroom, Bud would make it for me.” June recalled. “If he needed a design for his industrial arts class, I created one for him.”
Early on in their marriage, the Shelleys learned they could not have children. After grieving, they decided to “turn lemons into lemonade.” June focused her attention on interior decorating and rehabbing.
They had always dreamed of having their own home. So without a lot of money, they decided to build one — themselves.
On Saturday nights, they planned and worked in Bud’s wood shop classroom, eating dinners of canned beans, tuna fish and potato salad.
June made several designs for homes until they settled on one and built a model to scale, complete with furniture. She believes you should arrange the walls of your home around your furniture instead of letting the walls dictate where your furniture will go.
Starting with $50, they kept putting a little money away until it grew into $4,400, the amount they needed to buy two wooded lots in Wood Dale in 1950.
Next, June drew the blueprints.
“We got books at the library and found out how to do everything,” said June. “We learned from our mistakes.
“Bud’s uncle was an excavator and dug the hole in the ground. A year later we had saved enough to buy the 10-inch concrete blocks for the foundation that we laid ourselves.”
The couple yearned for a stone house, but their research told them stone had poor insulating properties.
“So we saved and purchased common brick — burned bricks that had been rejected at a brick yard. We colored the mortar a mustard color and left it protruding to give the exterior a more rustic look. Bud mixed the mortar and I carried the bricks, but we found bricklayers to build the walls.”
After five or six years, the home finally had all of the elements the city required for habitation.
They moved in. It had a roof, but no ceiling. Cement walls, but no heat. One electrical outlet, but only a few hanging bare bulbs. A working toilet and a kitchen sink on concrete blocks.
Bud and June entered the home through padlocked shed doors and slept in the living room. During the winter they used a kerosene heater piped through the chimney. The following year, they saved enough money to put in the heating system. They bought the tar paper for the roof and then shingled it themselves.
It took another five years to finish, and the Shelleys lived there for 45 years.
“We shared the work and the fun,” Bud said. “When you share projects, it’s cheaper, easier, faster and you can share the satisfaction.”
“We were determined from the beginning that we weren’t going to have a mortgage,” added June.
June thinks being raised by older parents made her more mature. They learned from the hardships of wartime and the remnants of the Depression that the future isn’t always guaranteed.
But they valued that lesson more than they feared it. The Shelleys were determined to avoid the financial pressure that had caused great dissension in both their families.
Time to move on
Bud and June knew it would be important in their older years to live where they would have friends, security and health care. So, in 1997 they sold their house in the woods and moved to a villa at The Moorings of Arlington Heights.
“We found out that the people who bought our house planned to tear it down,” June said.
“That news was almost as painful as when we were told we would have no children. We had nurtured the building and completion of our home almost like a child.
“But in life you have to move on and make the best of what comes your way.”
They took as much of their house with them as they could — the mahogany off the wall boards, mirrors, towel and drapery hangers, the doors, some glass, light fixtures. They spent the next five years decorating their villa at The Moorings with touches of home.
Bud likens himself and June to two streams that join and become one.
“We have the same moral values and ideas about spending money,” he pointed out. “We also have our differences, but her strengths offset my weaknesses and vice versa.
June says she and Bud remain best friends.
“We like each other and we like to be together,” says June.
“We’ve had a wonderful life. We taught arts and crafts for 16 years at a summer camp for children with cancer in Wisconsin. We were into square dancing, sailing and we’ve traveled all over the world.
“Everything we went through drew us closer together.”