At Long Last, Love

Barbara Towers thought Clarence Bolin might be the one for her when she met him 42 years ago. He liked her too, but “she was going out with one of my best friends.”

Towers married that best friend, and Bolin married another woman. The families spent decades as neighbors and friends. All along, Towers, now 61, and Bolin, 66, never said a thing to each other about those first impressions.

“We honored each other, our marriages and our families,” she said. “We never even verbalized our feelings.”

But with divorce and widowhood behind them, the two took Valentine’s Day vows Saturday at Clubhouse Two here in Leisure World, in front of 70 children, grandchildren, other relatives and lifelong friends.

“It’s about time!” said Towers’ oldest daughter, Elisa Pederson, who along with her two sisters and Bolin’s two daughters served as her mothers’ “women of honor.”

“It makes me very happy that they’re getting married because they love each other so much,” she said.

The Towers-Bolin love story is a thoroughly modern one, with old-fashioned twists. The couple lived together before marrying, something they confessed their parents never would have done. Both have been married twice before.

Bolin, a retired community college teacher, was married to his first wife for 13 years before divorcing. His second wife, Carmen, died of cancer in 1992. She told him before she died that if something ever happened to her and he remarried, she predicted it would be to Barbara, he said.

When he proposed to Barbara last July in a redwood grove in Northern California, Barbara said she thought at first he was crying because he was thinking of Carmen, who had been a good friend of hers. But he was simply caught up in the beauty of the moment.

“To me, that’s the whole crux of this story, that this is a family that is complexly interwoven, and how much care and love there is in all directions,” Pederson said.

“It’s marvelous,” said the Rev. Margie Clark, who performed the ceremony. “They’ve known each other so long. Their families know each other. They have a history between them. So often, this is something you wouldn’t have with a second or third marriage. It’s a union between two wonderful families.”

Bolin, known for years as “Uncle Clarie” to Towers’ children, had a request this week after one of her grandsons asked if he should call him Uncle Grandpa now.

“I think Dad or Grandpa would be nice, that would be fitting. That would make me happy,” he said quietly in their kitchen Friday, as assorted children and grandchildren camped out on the sofa, in the spare bedroom and in the bathroom.

Towers, a retired Los Angeles public schoolteacher, has married and divorced twice previously.

“This is my first wedding really, though,” she said. Her first marriage took place in the study of a women’s club, with no guests and no reception, she said. The second one was a quick ceremony at a Las Vegas chapel.

The couple thought of marrying in Las Vegas, but Bolin’s oldest daughter, Laurie Trejo, called after they announced their intentions and begged them to have a big ceremony that the whole family could enjoy.

They found a history of St. Valentine on the Internet to use on their wedding program, and hired a female minister, Clark, of the Church of Religious Science in Seal Beach.

“I think we’re basically ahead of a lot of people our age,” Towers said.

Still, the Saturday evening ceremony was full of tradition. The bride looked beautiful in pearls, a beaded top and Victorian lace skirt. The groom grinned bashfully in his tuxedo. There were gold-embossed napkins and a triple-tier wedding cake. The groom’s oldest granddaughter, Abigail, played the traditional “Wedding March,” and Bolin kissed the bride gently after they exchanged vows.

The couple planned to spend their wedding night at the Waterfront Hilton in Huntington Beach and honeymoon in Hawaii. When they return, they’ll spend a good deal of time on their 36-foot boat Ariel, sailing off into the sunset.