'I do's' that last

Faith and family have helped three siblings' marriages last 50 years or more

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CORRECTION

A Life, etc. story Tuesday about long marriages mistakenly said that none of the adult children of the Nystrom siblings has been divorced. Two people of that generation have been divorced.

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The five Nystrom siblings have been married for a total of 233 divorce-free years. The older three brothers -- Richard, 76, and Perry, 71, of the Triangle, and Charles, 74, of South Carolina -- have all celebrated 50-year anniversaries or longer with their original brides. Younger siblings Judy and Bill have been married for 43 and 37 years, respectively.

"In this day and time, when marriages don't last too long, it's a miracle," said Monsignor Tim O'Connor, who presided over a recent renewal of vows service for Raleigh residents Betty, 70, and Perry Nystrom at St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church in Cary.

Part of a Saturday evening Mass, the renewal brought both joy and tears for Betty. For one thing, she said, the vow to remain together "till death" has a markedly different meaning when the partners are in their 70s, not their 20s.

"It was very emotional," Betty said. "You remember being there the first time."

Long marriages, while not rare, are also not that common. The most recent U.S. census showed that only about 6 percent of married women reached their 50-year anniversaries. Still, at two special Masses Sunday, the Diocese of Raleigh celebrated 136 couples who have been married 50 years or longer, and another large group observing 25-year anniversaries.

So what keeps such couples cruising together for decades, while others fall apart?

Home life

The Nystroms had good role models for their own marriages as they grew up in the small manufacturing town of Seymour, Conn. The siblings' parents, Charles and Mae Nystrom, celebrated 42 years of marriage before the elder Charles died in 1972.

The family's stories glow in the light of a different time, with different needs and expectations. The Nystrom kids grew up without a car; dad walked home from his work as a tool-and-die maker for a big noon meal each day. In the 1940s, everyone was expected to show up for meals around the white enamel kitchen table; those who didn't show up, didn't eat.

"The boys are very well brought up and their mom was the one who did it," said Beverly Nystrom, 74, married for 53 years to the younger Charles, an engineer who is also 74.

The apartment had a kitchen, living room and the parents' bedroom on the first floor. The kids slept in two bedrooms in an uninsulated attic. The family was close-knit, for years sticking with the traditional breadwinner-homemaker division of duties between husband and wife.

"My mom pretty much stayed home until the war; she went to work at Peter Paul Mounds," Richard said. "I remember she and my dad had an argument about her going to work."

Lasting values

Faith was a factor for the Nystrom kids, but the family was not overly churchy. Mae sent the children to Sunday school with a nickel or a dime for the collection. These days, Richard is a semiretired Presbyterian minister, the Charles Nystroms attend a nondenominational church in South Carolina and the Perry Nystroms are devout Catholics.

"In our family, God is important," Betty said. "Jesus Christ is important."

The Nystrom siblings are all in good shape financially these days, but they remember plenty of hard times early on, when their children were young, moves were frequent and the brothers' careers were getting under way.

"When they work long hours, you didn't expect that," said Betty, who couldn't drive and was lonely at times when Perry was working 70 hours a week.