Cook: A love to outlast any war

photo David Cook

It was 1944. Bennie Marlin was 17 and in love.

Her name was Willena Ling. She went to Central High. He went to City. On weekends, they'd walk to the park, and talk the day away.

"She was the prettiest girl in high school," he said.

In 1945, he went to war. They put him on the USS Iowa, and he took Willena's black and white school photo with him wherever he went. To boot camp. Toward Pearl Harbor. Then, into the heart of it all: Tokyo Bay.

He wrote letters. She wrote back. He mailed her a silk handkerchief from Japan.

Then, America dropped the bomb.

Back home, Willena waited. And waited.

And waited.

The way he tells it, he came home from the war, searched high and low, but couldn't find her. Willena wonders if he looked hard enough.

The years went by.

She married a good man, and became Willena Chandler. He married a wonderful woman.

Willena got a job at Combustion Engineering. Worked on the second floor.

He took a job at Combustion. Worked on the first floor.

He moved into a house in Brainerd.

She lived a few blocks over.

They both went to the same dentist.

"We never crossed paths," Bennie said.

In 1982, her husband died. Then, Bennie lost his wife.

Willena stayed single and began to go out less and less.

But she never threw away that silk handkerchief.

He married again. But he always kept that picture from high school.

Last winter, his second wife died. He was 86. Surely, it was time for his heart to settle. Isn't love a young man's game?

But one morning not long ago, Bennie was reading the newspaper. He turned to the obits. One name caught his eye.

"That's Willena's sister," he said to himself.

He put on his khaki pants, white shirt and blue tie and drove to the funeral home.

It had been almost 70 years.

He walked in.

There she was.

"She hadn't changed one bit," Bennie said.

Willena was talking to a few women. Bennie walked up quietly behind them, and just waited. One of the women moved.

There he was.

"Well my," Willena said. "It's Bennie Marlin."

They started talking. Kept talking. He walked her to her car. They kept talking. That was early October, and they haven't stopped.

"We started dating again," said Bennie. "After 70 years, we're back together."

They take Sunday drives. She comes over to his house -- it's the only blue one on the block -- and they sit and talk. Last weekend, they went to Gatlinburg to look at the fall trees, orange and red and yellow, like fireworks.

Inside them both, it's still 1944.

"You always hear about these stories, but I never dreamed it would happen to me," Willena said.

Through it all, something inside them refused to quit, some no-surrender love that would never leave the other behind. Their hearts, veterans of the longest quest.

"I never forgot her and she never forgot me," said Bennie. "She is the love of my life. It took 70 years."

Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook at DavidCookTFP.

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