In 1946, Betty Yost began working in payroll at Associates Investment Company in South Bend and during her time in payroll, she wrote to soldiers who were overseas. She would write on blue stationary, address them, and drop off the letters at the mailing department in her office. Little did she know her next letter would lead to over 60 years of marriage.
Jimmie Vaughn, was working for a coal and ice company when he had been drafted for World War II and spent three years living in the jungle of the Philippines. His friend Erma Helman, who worked with Yost, thought it would be good for him to have someone to talk to and knew Yost had already been writing, and thought one more wouldn’t hurt.
Yost, who recently turned 100 years old, still remembers the day Helaman gave her the information to send Vaughn a letter. “I brought my letters in, and Erma who was the head of the mailing department said, ‘Betty, I noticed you bring a lot of mail mailing to fellows in service. Would you like to write one more?’ And I said, sure. Well, she knew Jim from church, and Jim had just been married a very short time, and his wife died very rapidly. So she gave me Jimmy's address, and then I wrote to him and I said, "hello, Jim, this is Betty.” shares Yost.
Vaugn wrote back, but to Erma, asking who this Betty was and why was she writing to him, “Erma explained to him who I was and how she knew me and then we just started writing back and forth. And my letter was always on blue stationary.” A whole year flew by, hundreds of letters and full hearts.
December 13, 1946, Vaughn wrote one of his last letters before returning home, the most special one yet, “Dear Miss Yost: This is a formal proposal for marriage. Will you marry me on the 25th of January 1947?”
Yost replied, “Dearest Jimmie, In answer to your darling letter I received today, yes, I will marry you, and oh, how very happy I’ll be to do so.”
It was New Years Day and Helman had a plan to get them together, “Well, in the meantime, Jimmy gets out of the service that same day she arranges for him to have dinner at her house and have me there too. Yeah. She called me up while I was working and she said, ‘Betty, Jimmy's in town. He's gonna pick you up and bring you to my house for supper.’”
“The first time I saw him, he was waiting by his car for me to come out of the associates from closing the payroll books. When we got to her house, she said, peel these potatoes. The best way to get acquainted is to peel potatoes together, so we peeled potatoes” says Yost with a warm laugh.
Although neither Yost or Vaughn were prepared for their first date peeling potatoes, Yost saw Vaughn and despite that he was skinny and had a yellow tint to his skin from Malaria, she looked at her future husband with nothing but love and admiration. “ He looked like a movie star.”
As proposed by Vaughn, they married January 25th of 1947. They went on a honeymoon trip in Spring Mill, with much laughter and a big smile Yost says, “They serve you breakfast and we never went down to breakfast. We never sat at our table at breakfast time… we always stayed in our room together.”
Shortly after, Yost became pregnant, went on to have 2 more, and bought a house (Yost’s dream house) that she still has today. Vaughn returned to his job working with coal and ice, and then attended a mechanics program.
Judy Boynton, their daughter, admired her parents' relationship and says she grew up in a loving home, “You just have to be best friends. Yeah. That's what I saw. My dad took care of my mom. That was the expectation. I grew up thinking, okay, you get married and that guy's gonna take care of you the rest of your life. My dad took good care of my mom.”
Before the passing of Vaughn at the age of 92, they celebrated 64 years together, happy and very much in love.
When asked how Yost stayed in love for so long, her reply was easy, “Every day he always said ‘Have I told you yet today that I love you?’”
Comments