Ellouise and Jim: 55 and Counting

If you follow Ellouise's website (and if you haven't discovered it yet, you should!) you already know that she and Jim celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary on Dec. 30th!

Ellouise and Jim Schoettler 1955

That's amazing. I'm just guessing, but I think she just might be the winner of the "Who was the first to get married" of all our classmates award.

She writes about that glorious event on her website:

" This time 55 years ago Jim and I were boarding a train for Baltimore at Union Station (DC) to start our new life together.


We were married in NC on December 30th and spent a brief honeymoon in Washington, DC on our way from NC to Baltimore to be there when the Hopkins Medical School classes reconvened January 2.. 

I will turn 75 in July - we were 19 and 24 on our wedding day.
Look at that math.
Jim and I have been together more than half our lives.
Our 55 years together is the heart of my life and story.


Were we doing it over - Jim and I probably would not want to get married between Christmas and New Years - its not great timing. But at the time it was perfect timing. Jim was a third year medical student at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He had a semester break then. Time to ride the train to Charlotte, get married, and bring a wife back to an apartment they had picked out.


We moved into that apartment on North Washington Street, in the shadow of the hospital with two suitcases. It will take several dumpsters and a truck to move us out of our house - where we have lived for forty one years. Along with the accumulated
stuff we have collected a rich treasure trove of memories.


A long marriage is a sweet blessing. You share each others lives, histories and memories. We often complete each other's sentences - or will say first what the other was thinking.
That connection is hard-won.
Swords as well as roses litter the road.


I am grateful we never let go of each other"