Still in love after 67 years

Newport Beach residents Dick and Gertie Meehan met May 9, 1942 during a “blind date” party that Gertie’s friend threw for her brother’s soldier friends stationed at Twentynine Palms.

Dick, who was 23 at the time, was the only civilian in the group of guys. Gertie was 18. When the group decided to drive from San Bernardino to the Santa Monica Pier, Gertie liked how Dick stayed on the sand with the other girls and kept them company while the soldiers dove into the waves.

Gertie, however, jumped in the water with the raucous group of soldiers, dress, high heels, hose and all.

“She was the most outgoing girl I had ever met,” Dick said. “The girl I was going with at the time was very quiet, and she was nothing like that.”

Some 67 years later, Dick and Gertie say they are still in love.

Gertie liked how Dick walked one girl up to her front door when it came time to drop her off at home.

Dick also escorted Gertie to her front porch at the end of the night, only he also asked for her phone number.

The next day, Dick and Gertie went out again with another group of friends.

At the end of the night, Dick waked Gertie to her door again, and the pair sat on Gertie’s porch talking while Dick’s friend waited in the car.

“We just talked and talked, and before we knew it, it was 3 a.m.,” Gertie said.

By the end of the night, the Dick and Gertie were talking about getting married. The friend Dick left waiting in the car fell asleep and was the best man at the couple’s wedding three months later.

It was a modest ceremony, in Gertie’s sister’s back yard in San Bernardino. The flowers came from a neighbor’s rose bushes.

Things weren’t always easy. Dick was drafted into the military in December, 1942, and was sent to an Army base in Texas.

Gertie gave birth to a daughter whom Dick would see only once before she was 4 years old because he was serving in the infantry in Europe during World War II.

After the war, Dick got a job as a bank teller. He would later retire as the vice president of the company.

The couple, who have lived in Newport Beach for the past 10 years, have three children and seven grandchildren.

Things haven’t always been easy, but their marriage has worked because they always agree on the big things, the couple said.

“It’s worked because he realized right away that I was the boss and he let me be the boss,” Gertie said.