Couple More Than Close--They Were Joined at the Calendar

Some lives just seem to fall together.

Leo Vidal and Adele Tabet were born a week apart in 1913 and met 21 years later when Vidal noticed the pretty young ticket seller in a New Mexico movie theater. A quick flicker of interest flamed into passion and then a marriage that stretched into seven decades, ending only with their deaths earlier this month, nine days apart, of separate cancers in separate rooms in an Irvine apartment.

The timing of the deaths seemed fitting, friends and relatives said, as though the couple’s lives were synchronized from birth and forged by love. She was born first, and she died first, said the couple’s daughter, Francine Kenney, a special education aide in Huntington Beach.

“She hung in there because of Leo and he was holding in there because he didn’t want to leave Adele alone,” added Maria de la Maza, a longtime friend who met the Vidals through their church, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Irvine. “When Francine told him that Mom was gone, it was interesting to see him. It was like he made the decision, ‘Now that Adele is gone, I don’t need to be around.’ ”

In many ways, the couple’s life together was quintessentially Californian. The couple came of age during the Depression, moved from Texas to Los Angeles to find their future during the Dust Bowl years, played their roles in World War II and raised three children--one natural son, one adopted daughter and one foster son, a German war orphan whose parents were killed by the Nazis.

And they worked, he as a Southern Pacific and then Amtrak ticket agent, she as a Spanish teacher and guidance counselor in a succession of Los Angeles high schools and community colleges.

“They were the embodiment of the American Dream,” said their son Ralph Vidal, a Santa Monica College physical education instructor and coach. “They started out with nothing and with a lot of hard work and laughter and enjoyment they made very comfortable lives for themselves and their children and got involved with their church and their community. They didn’t do anything special.”

Hands-On Husband, Cerebral Wife

Friends described the couple as opposites who meshed smoothly. He embraced physical labor with a passion, at one point building by hand a retaining wall at the couple’s Lake Arrowhead cottage. She was more cerebral, an avid reader and student of current events.

“Nobody stays married that long without really working at it,” the son said. “You have to give up some of who you are to make it go.”

Leo Vidal was born Christmas Eve 1913 in San Antonio. His mother died during his birth, and his father turned his back on the baby, leaving him to be raised by grandparents on a farm outside the city, the couple’s children said. He left school after the eighth grade to work.

Adele Vidal was born in Punta de Agua, N.M., a small mountainside village about 40 miles southeast of Albuquerque. Her parents were Lebanese immigrants, part of an extended family that settled around Mountainair, a slightly larger village down the mountain from Punta de Agua.

In a family memoir, Adele Vidal wrote that her family moved to Los Angeles in 1931--the year she graduated as valedictorian of Mountainair High School--because doctors recommended a warmer climate for her ailing mother.

She attended UCLA, graduating in 1936, two years after meeting her future husband during a summer stay in Mountainair, where he was building roads under the federal Civilian Conservation Corps program. The couple married five weeks after she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and, after a few months living in San Antonio, set off for California with $90 in savings.

Insistence on Making Wartime Contribution

Leo Vidal eventually went to work for the railroad, selling tickets at Union Station and helping Hollywood stars negotiate both the trains and the station, until his retirement in 1974, his daughter said. He also served a brief stateside stint with the U.S. Navy during World War II, volunteering after he was granted a deferment because he worked for the railroad, which the government saw as a crucial part of the war effort.

“It was just eating him alive watching all these [soldiers] come back with stumps for limbs,” the son said. “They assigned him to Point Hueneme, dealing with trains. He was so [angry].”

Adele Vidal worked for a time in a defense plant during World War II, then received an emergency credential to teach. In a career that covered 30 years, she taught Spanish at Los Angeles’ Jefferson, Jordan and University high schools, and Southwest College and West Los Angeles Community College before retiring in 1974.

The couple sold their Baldwin Hills home and moved to Lake Arrowhead but a few years later moved to Orange County, eventually settling in Irvine’s Turtle Rock neighborhood. A lifetime of church involvement brought them to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish, where they became active on social committees and weekly prayer groups.

Even as the couple’s health failed, they continued attending 9 a.m. Mass on Sundays, relying on fellow parishioners to help settle them in their usual spot in a front pew.

“They were like two teenagers cooing in the front pew,” said Father Thomas Pado, the church pastor.

De la Maza, a nurse who described the Vidals as her de facto parents, said religious faith and love for each other were twin heartbeats for the couple.

“Both of them were very social and they enjoyed their friendships and chatting with parishioners,” de la Maza said. “I know I’m going to miss them.”

The couple are to be buried today in Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Orange after a joint 10 a.m. funeral at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church.