A 75-year love story

Molly Shore

It’s a love story that spans nearly eight decades and 14 U.S.

presidents.

When Juanita and John Ross married in 1928, Calvin Coolidge was in

office and the 18-year-old bride wasn’t even old enough to vote.

On Tuesday, the Burbank couple celebrated their 75th wedding

anniversary with a luncheon at Burbank Gardens Retirement Home, where

they have lived since moving out of their home on Avon Street.

To mark their diamond anniversary, the couple’s table was

decorated with colorful balloons and bouquets of flowers. The

Oklahoma natives met in 1923, when he went to work for her father,

who owned a natural gas pipeline company.

“I was still in high school when he started working for my

father,” Juanita Ross, 93, said.

Asked when he knew that he loved her, 96-year-old John Ross said,

“It’s been so long, I can’t remember.”

Donald Ross, the couple’s 71-year-old son, said his father knew it

was love when he spent a $20 gold piece he was saving on a box of

chocolates for his mother.

“He worships her,” said the couple’s only child, adding that his

parents attribute their successful marriage to hard work, mutual

respect and their love of family.

“We have never had any trouble anytime. We’ve gotten along

beautifully all these years,” Juanita Ross said. Their love, she

added, has been strengthened over the years by their religious

beliefs.

Shilo Hawker, the retirement home’s 19-year-old activities

director, admitted that she has never met anyone who has been married

for 75 years.

“It’s an achievement, and I’m proud of them,” Hawker said. “It

gives people my age and from my generation hope.”