What does it take to make a marriage last 67 years? Nina Nichols, president of Resolution Research, reports first-hand.
Prague Couple Herschel and Reba Nichols Celebrate Their
67th Wedding Anniversary
The year was 1944. The United States was at war overseas. Back in Prague, OK, however, love was all around. Herschel Abraham Nichols and Reba Denney (then just 21 and 17, respectively) were married January 22, 1944 at the bride’s parents’ home, nearly five years after Herschel’s love-at-first-sight glimpse of Reba at Garden Grove Missionary Baptist Church. On hand to witness the nuptials were both sets of parents, Reba’s younger siblings, Freda and Bobby, and Reba’s best friend, Juanita Dean. Just three days after their marriage, however, the honeymoon was over. As they prepare to celebrate their 67th wedding anniversary this January, I’d like to share the story of their lives together.
Picture 2: Engagement Photos
On December 27, 1943, Herschel, then still a bachelor, was drafted into the U.S. Army. His tour of duty began in Ft. Sill, OK, where he spent ten days before heading to Camp Hahn near Riverside, CA for six months of grueling training in the desert. (Herschel remembers the stinging scorpions he and his fellow soldiers would have to shake from their sleeping bags each morning before rolling them up.) Upon completion of his six months of training, Herschel was furloughed from Riverside, so he and a couple friends hopped into a convertible and drove the nearly 1,400 miles back to Prague. After some much needed rest and a spin in (then girlfriend) Reba’s Model A, Herschel briefly returned to Camp Hahn before boarding a cross-country train, through the Royal Gorge, bound for Orlando, FL. While there, he made PFC (private first class) after he refused to let a major into the base’s live ammunition storage facility (which he was under strict orders from his captain to protect). The captain, after hearing of Herschel’s denial, took note of his tenacity and refusal to break orders, and Herschel was rewarded with the promotion. After three months in Orlando, the army moved Herschel to Camp Stewart in Georgia. Then, on his final furlough before shipping off overseas, Herschel hopped a train to Prague where he married his love, Reba Denney.
Three short days later, Herschel boarded a train back to Georgia, and from there, to Camp Stoneman near San Francisco, CA where he and about three hundred of his fellow soldiers from the 222nd Searchlight Battalion (amongst hundreds of others) set sail under the Golden Gate Bridge. They sailed without escort, aboard a converted Dutch streamliner ship (complete with on-board swimming pool!). The ship landed in New Guinea thirty-one days later, where Herschel began his duties as a T5 technician corporal and driver and a certified sharp-shooter (carbine 30 caliber rifle).
Meanwhile, back in Prague, Reba began working at Prague National Bank immediately following her graduation from high school in May 1944 (graduation was Friday, she began work on Monday). She and her best friend, Juanita, moved into a Prague apartment together on Broadway and spent many nights typing up and selling war bonds at the public school or Garden Grove Church. They sold these war bonds at “pie suppers”: small gatherings where people would come together to eat pie, drink coffee, and buy bonds. To catch the news, Reba and Juanita, whose husband was in the U.S. military as well, would walk over to the old Prague Theater, where they and the rest of the folks in town would learn about the war goings-on from black and white news reels. The idea of the theater may sound romantic, but when your new husband is on the other side of the planet and you have no idea when or if you’ll ever see him again, the theatre becomes a dark and scary place. Reba took comfort in the occasional, but sporadic, telegraph she received from Herschel, most of which she later burned, being the very private woman that she was and still is. And, on top of everything else, Reba wrote to Herschel “every single night of the world.” While he was off fighting in the war, Reba spent the long months of his absence working and saving for their future.
Halfway around the world, Herschel was anxious as a result of the separation from his new bride and his parents, to whom he was extremely close. Then, in August 1945, while sailing to Japan via the Philippines, the ship received word that the atomic bomb had been dropped, the peace treaty signed, and he and his fellow soldiers would not have to go to Japan and fight, as they had originally feared, but would instead be heading home! They sailed for ten days before reaching the coast of California. With the exception of a back injury sustained while building an airplane runway and roads in the jungles of New Guinea, Herschel returned mostly in-tact, albeit very thin, very tan, and very yellow from the Atabrine the soldiers were given daily to protect them from malaria in the jungles. (Reba said that even the whites of his eyes were yellow!) Despite his physical ailments, and even though his adored mother had passed while he was away, Herschel was overjoyed because he was alive and heading back to his bride! After a train ride to Leavenworth, Kansas, where he had his uniform cleaned and pressed while waiting in a local laundromat, and a bus ride to Shawnee, OK, he and Reba were reunited.
Reba, who was ecstatic for the war’s end and her new husband’s imminent return, said she was “thrilled to death” while on her way to the Shawnee bus station to pick up Herschel in her black 1939 Ford V-8. So thrilled, in fact, that when she arrived at the bus station only to find there were no parking spots available, she simply pulled up on the side of the street and got out of the car to meet her husband. Upon seeing her for the first time in eighteen months, Herschel exclaimed, “Oh, Mercy! What a woman!”
Picture 3: 25th Anniversary
The war was over, the couple was finally reunited, and their romance was renewed in full force. They bounced around between Herschel’s dad’s home and Reba’s parents’ home before finally saving up enough money to build and furnish their own home by Reba’s father’s store at Centerview. Shortly thereafter, they purchased eighty acres of land between Prague and Shawnee in the Garden Grove community onto which they moved their newly-built home (quite literally, on a truck). There, they raised cattle and Herschel farmed soy beans, cotton, corn, and peanuts. By this time, Reba had moved over to the Parks Brother’s Hardware store in Prague where she would work for many years before returning to banking. In 1949, just a few years after the war, Reba and Herschel welcomed their first child into the world: a son, Michael Nichols. In the 1960s, when farming got tough, Herschel took a job as a driver for Vanderveer Oil Company in Shawnee delivering oil and gas around the area. In 1964, fourteen years after the birth of their first child, Reba and Herschel welcomed their second child, this time a daughter, Nina. In 1972, Herschel and Reba sold the farm and built a new home, complete with country grocery store and gas station, just a few miles away on Moccasin Trail where they still reside today.
Picture 4: 40th Anniversary
Over the years, Reba and Herschel have shared many fond memories together, including seeing a television for the first time in Prague in the window of Haney’s Variety Store, and have celebrated many anniversaries and special occasions together. On their Silver Anniversary, their 25th, Nina was only five years old. She recalls the anniversary fondly because her mom and dad gave her a new stuffed kitty-cat as a present to accompany all the presents her parents were opening. On Herschel and Reba’s 40th anniversary, their children threw them a surprise anniversary party. It was on a Sunday while Nina was home from OSU for the weekend and when they saw all the cars at their house after church, they assumed Nina’s college friends were over for a visit so it was a true surprise shared with many friends from church and family members who came to celebrate. And on their 50th anniversary the couple celebrated at the Holiday Inn in Shawnee, OK, this time with even more friends and family. This Christmas season, Herschel, now 88, and Reba, now 84, threw a party for all their aides who help them maintain their lives in their home together where they both still reside and plan to do so until death they do part.
Mike and his wife, Donna, live next door to Reba and Herschel. Mike and Donna blessed Herschel and Reba with their only grandson, Sean, who lives with his wife, Sara, in Oklahoma City, OK. Nina lives between her parents’ home in Prague, Denver, CO, and South Africa.
As young newlyweds, the couple was very involved with the Garden Grove Missionary Baptist Church where they first met. They’ve actually both been church members there for longer than they’ve been married! Whatever your belief system, you have to agree that it seems like God has blessed their lives! The couple and their friends and family will be celebrating their 67th wedding anniversary this January 23, 2011 at their home on Moccasin Trail in between Prague and Shawnee.