They hold each other hearts

By tonya domokos

She remembers the first time she saw him, him and one of his friends were walking down the street in front of her house.

It was the summer of 54’.

“I ran out of our house and started to roll up the water hose,” Eva Jo Long said with a twinkle in her eyes. “I had to do something so I could check him out.”

He remembers the meeting vividly, he even remembers what she was wearing.

“I looked up and saw this pretty young girl run out of her house, she had long black hair, all the way down her back and she had on red hot pants,” Jerry Long said looking at her as he grabs her hand and smiles. She blushes; they must be sharing an intimate detail that only they should know.

Many years have passed since these to young people first met. Her hair is not so black, but he still thinks she beautiful.

 “ It hasn’t always been easy,” she said. He hangs his head ever so slightly as he says, “Yes, she has been quite a woman to stay with me.”

They both look deep into each other eyes and kiss.

Their love for each other fills the room like a sweet smelling candle.

It’s a love of two people who have been to the depths of hell and have made it back together.

Eva takes us back a few years to their early courtship.

“The next time I saw him he was with another girl,” she recalls.

“I told the girl’s sister, ‘If I couldn’t find someone better looking than him, I wouldn’t date at all.”

He doesn’t remember that meeting, of course, but what he does remember is her flirting with all the basketball players and how jealous he was. But it was seeing her with someone else that made him decide he had to go out with her. And with the help of friends and family they finally had their first date.

They dated that whole summer, which made for a lot of broken hearts. He had a bad boy reputation and the looks to go with it.

“He had jet black hair and steel blue eyes and was built like, what do they called it now, he was a hunk!” Eva laughs.

It was on their third date that Jerry told Eva he loved her, she remembers laughing and saying, “You don’t love me, you don’t even know me.”

She knew of his reputation and was a bit wary of his proclamation of love. But she hoped it was true because she was falling in love with him.

Four years later she knew he must love her because he had given up most of his bad boy ways and he ask her to marry him.

On Feb. 1, 1958, they became man and wife

Jerry joined the Navy and they spent 24 years traveling from state to state, up and down the coastline.

 They have two daughters and one daughter who died at birth.

“The girls used to be so proud of their daddy. When he would come home on leave they would walk him around the neighborhood three or four times just to show him off,” Eva remembers.

The service took its toil on this young couple too. The time he had to spend out at sea was not easy on a young wife at home with two small girls nor was it easy for her to see her fun-loving husband return from Vietnam a changed man.

When Jerry came back from Nam he carried a load of guilt, “He would never talk about it much and he still doesn’t. But I remember one time he just laid on the bed and cried, because he felt guilty for coming home when all those young boys were killed.” She said.

Then he began drinking more and more. He would spend more time at the bar than at home and she didn’t take that lying down. Eva said she had quite a temper and still does but she was going to fight for her marriage and she did. She fought hard for many years until one night while living in Houston; Jerry was in a car accident.

“I got the call, you know the call you always fear your going to get. They told me Jerry was in an accident and I needed to come right away,” she remembers as tears gather in her eyes. “When I got to the hospital they had him in the morgue and I needed to identify his body but before I could go down there the doctor was going to sign his death certificate.”

Then a miracle happened. The doctor noticed he was bleeding just a little from the back of his head. After checking him over again he found a faint pulse.

“The accident happened at 11 p.m. but I didn’t get to see him until 2 a.m.,” she said. “But he was alive. Broken up and in serious condition, but alive.”

His being alive was not the only miracle that took place while Jerry lay in ICU.

“I kept having this dream, the same dream over and over,” Jerry said. “There was this black stage coach that was driven by a headless man in a black cape. He would pull up beside me and motion for me to get in. I just kept thinking I have to see my wife again; I have to see my little girls grow up. I began to fight and tell him no, no, not now. I have to see my babies again.”

That fateful night in Houston was the late time Jerry ever had something to drink. His love for his family was more powerful than his addiction to drinking.

Jerry says his whole attitude on life changed.

 Are there still problems?  “Of course, and there probably always will be”, they laugh together. “She is still that saucy young girl who ran out to get a look at me that summer day long ago,” he laughs. “She’s just not in hot pants.”

How does she feel? “I almost lost him again about a year ago and the fear I felt in Houston doesn’t compare to the fear I felt while I sat in the waiting room of St. Michael’s Hospital. They may have been operating on his heart but they had my heart in their hands. You see, even with all of our differences, he is still the boy I fell in love with in1954, the man I married in 1958 and the man I love today in 2005.”