She Waited 50 Years for Mr. Right

What is the best age for first getting married? 21? 25? (Never, you say?) I was 30 when my wife and I stood at the altar. Some might delay even longer.

What would you think of waiting until you were 73 for your first wedding?

Dr. Marjorie Baughan, a hematologist/oncologist at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, kept asking me why I found her marriage so interesting. Easy answer: Because Hollywood hasn’t seen a love story like this since its Cary Grant/Deborah Kerr days. You’d need Lauren Bacall to do this one justice.

The movie cameras would have to span several continents, and more than a few decades, to capture it all. Marjorie Baughan of Corona del Mar and David White of Canberra, Australia, met and fell in love 50 years ago. They married last November. His second, her first.

They met in Japan in 1947, during its postwar occupation. He was a military officer. She was working for the U.S. Surgeon General’s office. Introduced through friends, for the next several months they were inseparable.

But White had to return to Australia, and Baughan was determined to become a doctor, not an easy road for a woman in that era. So they parted and agreed to continue their romance through the mail, until they could meet again. That time didn’t come until three years later, in London, where he was on temporary duty for the Australian Army. She flew there to be with him.

“We found ourselves still talking about the same things that had kept us from getting married before,” she said. White added: “When you live on separate continents, it really isn’t that easy to resolve everything. Our careers just took us in different directions.”

Not that their love had diminished between 1947 and 1950. Oh no, Baughan says: “I had it for him pretty bad.”

But she left London with nothing decided. Though they continued to write, the years of transcontinental separation began to pile up. White went to war in British-protected Malaysia, then later into civilian defense work. In 1956, he fell in love with a woman in Australia. He and his wife, Aileen, were happily married for 38 years and had four children.

Baughan had other struggles besides long distance love. As unfair as it might sound today, she kept getting turned down by medical schools, for the sole reason that she was a woman. She wasn’t up against glass ceilings; they were solid steel doors.

Baughan finally qualified for the University of Texas Medical School, as part of its “10 percent minority” program. (Yes, women were considered minorities.) After earning her degree and finishing her internship, she wanted to study hematology and oncology at UCLA. But she had to wait for a change of administration--one more open-minded, she said--before she was finally admitted.

Baughan went on to a successful medical career in San Diego County and then Orange County. She has held several professorships along the way, and currently teaches medicine at UC Irvine.

She never forgot her love for David White. But she discovered that it was possible to remain friends. After his marriage, they exchanged Christmas cards every year. In 1967, she was asked to give a speech at a medical conference in Australia. White, his wife, their four children, and White’s mother-in-law all met Baughan and took her to dinner.

“They were all very gracious,” Baughan recalls. After that, it was back to exchanging Christmas cards--for 30 more years.

Though Baughan was surrounded by men in the medical profession, and dated often, she never married. Her career was all-consuming, she explained. I asked her if perhaps she kept comparing men she dated to White. Maybe none of them could meet the standard he had set in her mind.

“I wasn’t aware of it at the time,” she said, “but subconsciously, I’m sure now that it’s true.”

She and White each had crises to face late in life. In her mid-60s, Baughan suffered from breast cancer. White’s wife began a long, debilitating heart-related illness. She died in 1994.

“I really didn’t think I’d ever marry again,” White said.

He’d never been to the U.S. and thought such a trip would help ease the pain of losing his wife. He arrived in April, a year ago, and called on Baughan.

“I knew he was terribly lonely, and I thought I might be able to console him,” Baughan said. “I didn’t expect anything more than that.”

But once they met, it was Japan and London all over again.

“We weren’t any different, just older,” she said. “Our hair had changed color, that’s all.”

Baughan realized she’d never really stopped loving White. And White told me: “I discovered the magnetism was still there, just like it had been before. It was really something.”

After a month together, they knew it was time to do what they had almost done 50 years ago--get married. They were both so sure, they couldn’t tell me with any certainty who first brought it up.

White returned to Australia in June to inform his very surprised children. Baughan followed in November. They married in the small village of Gundaroo. Baughan was pleased that White’s children, and his late wife’s family members, so graciously accepted her. White, only 70, joked that his new bride, 73, had “robbed the cradle.”

Their honeymoon, five decades coming, was a trip around the world.

Baughan is mostly retired from medicine now. The couple will split their time between the two countries. Follow the sun, as White describes it.

“When we decided to get married,” Baughan said, “we thought it would be a good way to wind our way toward the end of our lives. Maybe we’re just starting the next phase.”

Wrap-Up: I met this delightful couple on Sunday at a St. Joseph Hospital fund-raiser fashion show at the Disneyland Hotel. The models were either doctors or cancer survivors. Baughan, among those on the runway, represented both. She wore a lovely sapphire blue silk gown, made of material she had purchased in Bangkok, on her honeymoon. The large audience applauded her with great enthusiasm. Most of them didn’t know, of course, what an incredible year Dr. Baughan has had.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com