February 2008 Vol. 27. No. 2

Published by the Humboldt Senior Resource Center in Eureka, California. HSRC is a non-profit community-based organization offering services for senior citizens, multi-generational families and caregivers.

Staying the course: Valentine dance began 70 years together
Area 1 Agency on Aging: New Information Directory for seniors is here
Around the Center: Check out the Public Health Department’s free clinics for adults
Blood draws: Take advantage of St. Joseph’s offer
Senior Center Conversations: Lloyd Perkins at 99 is going strong
Healthy innards: Strengthening the pelvic floor

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Staying the course
Valentine dance began 70 years together
by Barbara Clark

Frank and Geri Borges in their Manila home. Photo by Barbara Clark

Frank and Geri Borges of Manila have the secret to success. If only others could pick up on it. They’ve been married for 70 years. And the secret?

“As long as he lets me be boss, “Geri said with a twinkle in her eye and a big grin. Geri Borges, a small, graceful 85-year-elder, can hide behind her tall chunky husband, Frank, 92. He could easily overpower her. But that’s not how it works in their relationship.

“It’s half and half,” he said happily.

The two met on Valentine’s Day when she was only 15 years old. They have to count back to surprise themselves with the 70 years together. She was too young to get married in California the next year, so they and their families went to Reno for the wedding.

Humboldt County was different 70 years ago. Frank Borges grew up on a farm in the Mad River bottoms off School Road in McKinleyville, mucking stalls, taking care of 15 cows. Geri grew up in Dows Prairie. Youngsters those days went to the Clam Beach dance hall, a well- known hangout of the time.

“It was the first dance I ever went to that wasn’t a school function,” Geri said. “He’s the first guy I dated. The first and the last.”

The couple had six children, four of them still living. Geri didn’t stay home with them the entire time, however. She and her sister worked in the old Arcata Laundromat, where the college is now. She worked as a baker for the schools, cooking first at the Manila school, then Sunset, then baking bread and desserts for all the schools. “I enjoyed working where there were kids,” she said. Standing on hard floors finally called a halt to her working days.

Frank retired from 21 years working for the county, where he was a grader driver. He’s famous for being the driver in an early 1980s snowstorm in which he graded his way through the snowdrifts into Kneeland and got lost going in. He needed to clear the roads to get food in to the stock. Lost in the storm, he didn’t come out until the next day.

Frank spent most of his working years on big Caterpillar tractors. His job at the mill was cutting big logs, and moving the monsters into rows in the mill yard. He worked for the barrel factory, and he drove the big Cat to carry rock to the crusher. He hauled tons of wood shavings from the Hammond Mill and graded the Manila Community Park waterfront where on a sunny January day in 2008, the parking lot was full of cars, with families on the swing sets and kids tossing Frisbees in the field.

The couple is still living in the house that Frank and his carpenter brother-in-law built for them in Manila in the ‘50s, just two blocks from the park he built. Photo montages on the walls around their living room attest to the growing years, the grandchildren and great grandchildren.

It’s a good life, the two agreed. “It’s give and take. You have to live your life the way you want to.”

Barbara Clark is editor of Senior News.