Fifth of five brothers reaches golden wedding anniversary

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The five Wheaton brothers always shared a special kinship.

Their bond showed in the way they all sneaked smokes as children, all served in the military, all worked and played hard.

Now they're sharing something more. When Glen Wheaton danced in celebration with his wife, Dixie, on an August weekend, he became the last of the brothers to reach his 50th wedding anniversary.

The five men -- and their wives -- credit the example of the Wheatons' parents, spouses with similar principles and values learned in the Depression and nurtured over decades.

According to a 2002 Census Bureau report, only about one of every 20 marriages in a 1996 survey reached a golden anniversary. However, David Popenoe of the Marriage Project at Rutgers University said he doesn't know of any definitive study with that information.

But nobody would dispute that the odds of all five brothers reaching that milestone are astronomical. Combined, they boast 275 years of marriage.

"By today's standards, it's pretty unusual," Popenoe said.

Kay and Nellie Wheaton of Oak Grove, Mo., celebrated their 58th anniversary this year. Ed and Betty of Markham, Va., had their 57th. Kent and Jane of Independence reached 56 years. And Jim and Marti, also of Independence, have reached 54.

"It's something that seems to be inherent in the boys, as well as the girls they chose to marry," Betty Wheaton said. "And a lot of love."

The men are kind, don't cuss and are fine providers. Good fathers. They even all eventually quit smoking.

They acknowledge the role of good luck and missing tragedies -- like unemployment or the death of a child -- that can derail a marriage. Kay and Ed have had heart attacks, but otherwise the brothers have faced no major crisis except for the loss of their parents.

Dianna Robinson, daughter of Kay and Nellie, has been married 31 years. She said her dad and uncles make family a priority.

"Their parents had a good marriage," Robinson said. "They were one-mate oriented. Divorce wasn't in their vocabulary."

The brothers' mother, Mamie (Culver), was born in 1889, and their father, Oscar, was born in 1890. They were married 34 years, until Mamie died from cancer at age 65.

Mamie attended a one-room school in Bates County until she was 16. She moved to Butler to live with kin and attend high school. She knew that was a hardship for them, so she took a test and became certified to teach in the one-room school she had left. She supported herself. During the summer, she attended college. She quit teaching when she married, but she worked as a newspaper freelancer.

Oscar served in World War I in the "Spruce Division" of the U.S. Army. In those days, the Signal Corps built its own airplanes, and Oscar was part of a crew that cut timber.

As a civilian, he spent his life as a sharecropper. He also took on extra work, grooming show horses.

The boys were raised during the Depression, and their parents took them to whatever church was closest to the farm.

They said their parents rarely raised their voices to each other. Mamie set the goals and delivered the discipline.

"If punishment was due, we had to listen to a long lecture before being spanked by a switch that we had to cut ourselves," Ed said. "The switching was not nearly as bad as the lecture."

As the boys grew, the military beckoned, and Mamie worried that they would drift apart. Four spent time in the U.S. Air Force, and Kent served in the U.S. Army.

Ed made the Air Force his career, and he spent 26 years at several bases overseas and in the United States. Kay managed lumberyards, Glen taught in the Shawnee Mission, Kan., School District, Jim was a tool and die maker and Kent, an industrial engineer.

Mamie need not have worried about drifting. For almost two decades the couples -- except for Ed and Betty, who live too far away -- have met once a month to eat. Ed gets weekly e-mails from his brothers.

And every other year the extended families have a reunion. The couples have 11 children, 24 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren.

Their advice for a long-lasting marriage?

"You have to do things together," Marti said. "When the kids graduated, I told Jim, `We have to do something."' They took up square dancing, and they ride motorcycles in the summer.

Kent and Jane also took up square dancing, as did Glen and Dixie.

Several of the couples go to church, and Ed and Betty pray together every night.

Kay and Nellie traveled to see Uluru, a massive sandstone formation in central Australia, a place he'd wanted to visit since he was a boy.

Marti, Jim's wife, said it also was important to have separate interests. She is in the League of Women Voters. Ed and Kent were Boy Scout leaders. Glen carves wood.

Ed and Betty said a couple must expect disagreements, compromises and reconciliations.

"My wife can never tell me that she loves me too many times, and I likewise," Ed said.

Not that every day is idyllic.

"All of us have argued with our wives," Kay said. "We settled it and went on."