Love bug strikes this pair at young age

Wallace and Bobby Prowell are going strong after 60 years of marriage

By Barbara Sherman

The Regal Courier, Jun 24, 2010, Updated Jun 24, 2010

Barbara Sherman / Regal Courier

LOTS OF GOOD MEMORIES — Bobby and Wallace Prowell met as teenagers and married two years later, embarking on a life that led him to the ministry so they raised their four children in several different states as they moved around.

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Wallace and Bobby Prowell just celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary June 18, and at the rate they are going, they will be celebrating their 75th and beyond.

With a variety of interests and a good sense of humor, they stay young by being active in their church and getting satisfaction from helping their fellow man.

However, they have a small dispute about where Wallace was born May 1, 1930: He says it was in Baker City, although he points out that in 1911 the city dropped "City" from its name but restored it in the late 1980s. "Your birth certificate says 'Baker,'" said Bobby, adding, "We go back and forth on this."

Wallace graduated from Baker High School in 1948 and worked on farms for a couple years. He also worked for six months as a "gandy dancer," laying new sections of railroad track and doing track maintenance.

Meanwhile, Bobby, who was named Roberta at birth, was born in Fayetteville, Ark., but grew up "all over." She spent time in Arkansas, Idaho, Pennsylvania and Oregon. When moving to Bellevue, Idaho, in the sixth grade she quickly lost her Southern accent noting that "the other kids take it out of you fast."

Bobby finished high school in Baker or Baker City, depending on whom you ask. She was a year behind Wallace in high school and met him the week he graduated, an incident she recalled with a laugh.

The local Elks Club put on a party for the graduating class, and Wallace went with three of his buddies while Bobby was the guest of a "different senior."

"I wasn't looking for a girlfriend or even thinking of a girl, but she noticed me," said Wallace, noting they met again a few days later at the nearby Radium Hot Springs. "I was swimming with the three same guys I had gone to the party with."

"Do you want my version?" Bobby asked. "I was with the same date I had gone with to the Elks Club party. At the hot springs, I found out the guy was a total octopus. I needed a safe haven and found it in Wallace."

Three days later, Bobby and Wallace went to the hot springs together, but two weeks later, she left for two months to visit relatives in Arkansas.

"We kept the letter carriers busy all summer," Bobby said.

They dated through the year she was a senior in high school, and after an Easter sunrise service the next spring, "we were sitting in the car afterwards, and Wallace gave me my diamond ring," Bobby said. "We went home and woke my parents, and they weren't happy. I wasn't going to be 18 until the next October."

Bobby graduated in 1949 and then worked for a year, and they got married in June 1950.

Wallace decided that he wanted to become a minister, and they moved to Eugene so he could attend Northwest Christian College. "I worked my way through college, so it took five years," Wallace said.

In the 1950s, women couldn't earn much money working, but Wallace could earn $25 to $30 for half a day's work doing lathing.

"We went home (to Baker City) for Christmas, and Wallace overheard his sister protesting about me not working, and informed her he could make as much in one afternoon as I could all week," Bobby said. "However, I took classes that interested me although I was never in a degree program."

On the home front - "I had never cooked," Bobby said. "Mom did all the cooking. I tell people he survived the first two years because I could read, and most products told you what to do with them."

She took cooking classes as well as ones in clothing, speech and piano, and she gave birth to their first son in Eugene.

Wallace survived Bobby's novice cooking, and he graduated from Northwest Christian College with a bachelor of theology degree in 1955.

"While I was a Northwest Christian College, I had a student pastor position at Scotts Mills," said Wallace, explaining that students served as pastors for many small churches in the area that could not afford full-time pastors.

Bobby grew up in the Disciples of Christ Church, and Wallace has been a member there ever since he met her.

In 1959, they moved to Des Moines, Iowa, so Wallace could attend Drake Divinity School, and there they had their second son and first daughter.

"I say that one baby didn't slow me down at all," Bobby said. "With two, I went to church with Wallace about once a month since he was preaching 100 miles south of Des Moines. Otherwise the children and I went to church in Des Moines. With three children, I only went with Wallace once in a while."

After getting his master of divinity degree from Drake in the fall of 1959, the family moved to Newport, Ore., where Wallace had his first full-time pastor's job - until that point he had done construction work to make a living.

They spent two years in Newport, where their second daughter was born.

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