by Trish Rudder
Patricia and Gary Greene have been married 65 years. Last Thursday, August 29, they celebrated their marriage of August 29, 1959 at Cacapon Resort State Park where they spent their honeymoon all those years ago.
Both from Silver Spring, Maryland they were married in the Episcopal Church of the Ascension there and then traveled to Berkeley Springs.
Because they both loved the outdoors, a friend’s father told them he knew of “the perfect place to go” for their honeymoon. He pulled out a map and showed them Cacapon State Park to spend three nights at the old Cacapon hotel.
The cost for the hotel room was $8 a night.
“We spent a whole $24,” Pat Greene said last week.
The Greene’s are both 84 years old, and traveled from Ephrata, Pa. where they reside now, to come to Berkeley Springs to celebrate the life they’ve had together.
They spent two nights last week in Cacapon Resort State Park’s King’s Suite in the new hotel — a lot bigger than their room in the old inn 65 years ago, Gary Green said.
photo by Lori Lange
They both had a message for the secret of a long marriage: “We worked as a team,” Pat Greene said. “We learned to forgive,” Gary Greene said.
The pair was 14 when they met in the summer of 1954. They lived in the same apartment building in Silver Spring where Gary, who was taller than the other boys, said they were outside playing around.
Gary said Pat and her mother were looking at the boys from their apartment, and Pat’s mother said to Pat, “I’d go for the tall one.”
“I was in short shorts and a halter top. That was the main attraction,” Pat Greene said.
They graduated from Blair High School and both got jobs in 1958 and the next year, they got married.
In 1959, they visited Caudy’s Castle Rock in Hampshire County.
“We did not go up to the rock, but you could walk on the property then,” Pat said.
Gary is a watercolor artist, and she hopes he will find something that will hang on their wall at home as a reminder of their time spent in West Virginia.
She said they both came from broken families but told each other they will stick together.
“We had no mentoring of what a family would be,” she said. They found a religious calling at age 32. “We were born again. In 1972 we met Jesus,” Pat said.
She said they met people and talked about being married and about life and giving.
“We focused on others instead of ourselves and we’re a team and work together. Giving of yourself is one of the secrets of life,” she said.
Pat worked as a classroom assistant in an elementary school and Gary worked at a park and planning commission office. He also was an artist with an upcoming show, so they had to get back to the east after traveling across the country for 15 months in a 32-foot travel trailer.
They were on their way back home and discovered Ephrata, a town near Lancaster and fell in love with the town and moved there from Silver Spring.
The Greene’s said last week that they stay busy. They work with homeless people and Pat teaches Sunday school. Gary paints watercolors and has a website gallery at GGG Artworks.
They raised two sons together. Danny is 63 and Eric is 59 and the couple has one grandson, Graham.
Just like they were on a hot summer day last week, Pat and Gary Greene still looked smitten with each other.
photo by Trish Rudder
