Happily, His Wife’s on the Run

The last time Navy Lt. Bradley Lorenzen saw his wife, Lisa, she was in a wheelchair. So he failed to recognize the thinner, smiling woman who came running toward him at Los Angeles International Airport on his return from a six-month stint in the Antarctic. A car accident three years ago ruptured two disks in Lisa’s back and she was unable to leave her wheelchair and had become addicted to pain-killing drugs. When she failed to respond to physical therapy, she was told that doctors were going to operate. That goaded her into entering a hospital to kick the drugs and beginning a program of exercising and dieting that helped her lose 65 pounds. “I was determined to do this. I hated myself and wanted to bring myself back to reality,” she said. The 28-year-old mother of two girls said she didn’t tell her husband about the changes because she wanted him “to be real surprised” on his return to their Oxnard home. There the 30-year-old Lorenzen was greeted with balloons, streamers and a banner that read: “Welcome Home Daddy. We Love You.”

--In 81 years of marriage, Calvin Dunmire, 105, can’t recall ever having a fight with his wife, Mina, who will soon be 101. “There’s no secret to it. We just lived happily together,” Calvin explained at the couple’s home in West Kittanning, in southwestern Pennsylvania. The Dunmires were declared the nation’s longest-married couple by Worldwide Marriage Encounter, a religious-oriented group that sponsors marriage enrichment weekends. Although the Dunmires claim there is no secret to their commitment, son Paul, 80, their only surviving child, says their harmony stems from their ability to complement each other. Until she suffered some strokes and he slowed down, Mina ran the household exclusively while Calvin ran his lumber, natural gas and banking businesses.

--While the Dunmires celebrate eight decades of marriage, about 600 people in Chicago who thought they had divorced may be in for a shock. Circuit Judge Benjamin S. Mackoff, presiding judge in the Domestic Relations Division, said that nearly 300 divorces granted in the last three years could be voided because lawyers failed to file the proper transcripts. Mackoff’s action is part of a series of reforms he initiated to streamline the Divorce Court process and cut the backlog. The judge said that, so far, only one of the 18 judges in the division has had his cases reviewed. But one of the petitioners in those cases, Ernistine Hollingsworth, said she had been considering remarriage and was astonished at the news. “This is crazy,” she said. “After all I have been through, and now this.”