Gilbert Herrick was just waiting for the right woman to settle down with. At age 99, he has finally found her.
Mr. Herrick, a retired postal worker and World War II veteran, has lived at Monroe Community Hospital in Rochester, N.Y., for 1 1/2 years. His bride, 86-year-old Virginia Hartman-Herrick, moved in a year ago.
She remembers the day they met, soon after she became a resident. She had put some of her work (she paints china) on display in a common room. Mr. Herrick, an oil painter, went to check it out. The rest is history.
“There’s nobody here to talk to,” Mr. Herrick told the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester. “She was the only one, and I started visiting her every day. I thought she would kick me out.”
The relationship turned into a romance, and the couple decided they wanted to move into a room together. But the hospital’s policy states that only married couples can live together. There seemed to be only one solution.
“So she asked me [to marry her], and I said yes,” Mr. Herrick said. The wedding, arranged by Mr. Herrick and Mrs. Hartman-Herrick’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, went off without a hitch, despite the bride and groom’s confinement to wheelchairs.
They may be newlyweds (they pass love notes to each other and giggle at their contents), but the banter between them sounds like it comes from a pair who have been together for a while. Mr. Herrick has a job opening the hospital’s greenhouse door, and he is paid $8 a month. “I know it’s not much for a married man,” he said.
“But at least it’s an income,” his wife chimes in.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/24/at-99-wwii-vet-finds-his-soul-mate/
Compiled by Laura Donovan © 2011 the Daily Caller
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