For Seniors : LINDA FELDMAN : ‘New Kid’ and Model T Ford Driver Find Late-Life Love

Helen Hahn of Santa Monica is marrying Henry Borts of Iowa on June 24 at the groom’s farm. Family and friends will gather to wish the couple well and dine on a help-yourself meal of finger foods and sandwiches. The bride, 81, will wear blue. Borts is also 81.

Iowa is a long way from the Westside but close to Hahn’s heart. She grew up there on a farm during the ‘30s and drove a Model T Ford when she was only 13. She had to--there were no buses to take her to school. Every morning, she drove herself--and that new kid who moved in down the road--to school. She did that for four years, graduated from high school and moved out of town to go to college.

But the Depression killed a lot of dreams and Hahn never finished college. She worked as a maid and helped her family out with money. When a friend said she was driving to California, Hahn packed all her belongings into one overnight case and gave her friend $15 for her share of the trip. Hahn arrived in Los Angeles with $25. She stayed at the YWCA Downtown and landed a maid’s job for $50 a month. She married the young gardener who worked at the house and had two children. The couple were together for 42 years until his death in 1982.

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Over the years she visited family in Iowa and kept up her friendship with that “new kid,” Henry Borts, who stayed in Iowa, married and prospered as a farmer.

“We were all good friends over the years,” Hahn said. “Henry’s wife and I corresponded for 50 years. I never thought I would marry him, but when I didn’t receive a Christmas card one year, I found out his wife died. So I wrote to him and he wrote back,” she said.

That led to the pivotal letter last year where she asked him to pick her up at the Des Moines Amtrak station and drive her the 30 miles to her sister’s house in Ames. Hahn admits she was sending him a message and he got it.

Hahn brings out the letter he wrote back to her. “He’s not a sophisticated guy, he’s a hard-working, salt-of-the-earth Iowa farmer, so he wrote: ‘I read your letter and I didn’t know what I’d be getting into or what others might think, so I asked my brothers and sisters what I should do and they all said you better go get her. I’m going to greet you with not just a handshake.’ Well, I just laughed and cried,” she said.

Hahn and Borts hadn’t seen each other in a very long time. When they met at the train station, his first words were: “I lost my hair.” And she replied: “The old gray mare ain’t what she used to be, either.”

Borts brought his brother and sister-in-law with him. They all went to Borts’ farm, where he grilled some pork chops. When Hahn was about to leave, Borts told her, “Helen, you’re not going to get away again.”

Hahn went to Iowa twice more and Borts came to California for her birthday. “He stayed with me and ruined my reputation,” she said wryly. “But he goes to church every Sunday and was a bit uncomfortable, so we started talking marriage,” she said.

Not only did he buy her a topaz ring surrounded by diamonds but he also made her a quilt and matching drapes. On Christmas, 1994, he told her he had loved her ever since that first day when she picked him up in her Model T.

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Today, Borts restores Model Ts and continues to farm in Iowa, where the couple will live for most of the year. They’ll miss the winters there and take up residence in Santa Monica until the frost melts.

Was it destiny? Now, that’s probably not a topic you’ll hear discussed around the cracker barrel in Indianola, Iowa, where Borts’ farm is. But Hahn said, “Well, destiny, I don’t know, but we picked up where we left off. I’d like to think that we have a future. He’s a worker, a doer and I’m a reader and a dreamer. We’re not going to think of how many years; we’re just going to enjoy each other.”

Borts, speaking from Iowa, said: “Destiny--what’s that? She’s the one girl I would ever trust. We spent our early years together and we think we can have fun in our last years together.”

Would Hahn recommend a late-life marriage? “Don’t pass up a chance for happiness but be careful.”

There’s a lot of Iowa common sense left in Helen Hahn.