If they had to live their lives over again, they wouldn’t have enough time

ELIZABETHTOWN – She changed the dress code for Whirlpool Corporation workers and waited on Henry Ford on Sunday mornings. He jumped out of airplanes and guarded nuclear missile sights.

Together they have been married for 64 years as of May 7 and they reside in Bladen County.

“My local name is Joyce; Brenda Joyce Gooden Conklin,” she said. “And my husband is Norman Conklin.”

Joyce is a Bladen County girl, born and raised with two younger siblings, her dad who farmed and her mother that worked at the hospital in Elizabethtown all of her life. She graduated from Tar Heel High School in 1959 while Norman was born above the Mason/Dixon line and she still calls him “a Yankee.” The way this Tar Heel “jumping jack,” as her husband calls her and “the Yankee” got together was a beautiful and wonderous tale, but their story is magical.

To cover all of it in a newspaper article would be impossible, but what will be revealed is a couple who has stuck together through thick and thin, raised two incredible boys who graduated from East Bladen High School, are both workaholics and have no plan to slow down their pace – even though she is 83 and he is 86.

They are entrepreneurs who make things happen from nothing, are adrenaline junkies to a degree, have had incredible adventures, traveled all over the world and are still madly in love with one another. In fact, you will rarely see one without the other.

Norman was born in Ovid, Michigan, and his family lived in Elsie, Michigan where he graduated from high school in 1958. He spent a lot of time working on his grandfather’s dairy farm where they had a creamery. He also was a four-sport athlete and was active in the Civil Air Patrol.

“Being in a small high school, I played football, basketball, baseball and we generated our own track team,” he said. “Football was my favorite and I played right half. After high school, the draft was on and I wanted to get drafted, but my number would not come up for a long time so I just went and enlisted. My dad was in WWII.”

He did his basic training at Fort Linwood in Missouri, and then went on to Fort Chaffee Joint Maneuver Training Center in Arkansas for advanced individual training. He then went on to Fort Bragg for airborne school.

“And, during that time I was sort of a peon,” he said. “We were jumpers and I jumped out of airplanes. I was also the clerk for the platoon leader. That first jump, you just had to run with it. I liked it and I’d do it right now if I could.”

After high school, each one was being prepared for their futures in their careers and for life with each other. After high school Joyce immediately went into the business world, working for Carolina Telephone in Fayetteville while Norman had graduated from Elsie High School in Michigan and immediately went into the military in 1959 just as Vietnam was getting started as a “military action.”

“My friends introduced me to some man,” she said with a big grin on her face. “My friend said, ‘he’s so nice, he doesn’t go to bars, he doesn’t smoke…’ and I said, ‘he’s perfect.’”

From an initial meeting at a bowling alley in Fayetteville on Fort Bragg Road, her a local business woman and him, a soldier stationed at Fort Bragg, they went on their first date. They attended the movie “A Summer Place” starring Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue. Immediately they began to see so many things that they liked in one another.

Norman proposed to Joyce and gave her a diamond on Monday, Feb. 29, 1960. 68 days later, they were married on Saturday, May 7, just before he was deployed to Okinawa.

“We were going to get married in July,” he said. “But then I got orders to go to Okinawa and so I said, we’ll wait until I get back and she said, ‘no, we’re going to get married NOW.’ And so, we did.”

They were married in Dublin, North Carolina and in those early years, Norm was gone quite a bit and didn’t even get to see his first child until he was six months old.

“Because he was overseas a lot, I called him ‘rice paddy daddy,’” she said and then asked, “Am I being silly? Anyway, he was in places like the Philippines, Korea, Okinawa and that’s why I called him ‘rice paddy daddy.’ When he came home, he went to school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for nuclear weapons school there. From there we went to New York – to the Finger Lakes area near Niagara Falls. I found out later that why we were there was mainly underground.”

She of course was talking about the missile silos that were planted there, Norman was assigned in security and was assigned with a high and secret clearance.

“And there I got a job at a café there as a waitress and guess who I waited on every Sunday morning. Mr. Henry Ford – the Ford man. They had a huge home on one of the lakes. And he was a good tipper.”

Vietnam was one period of their lives that caused some fears and tensions.

“I was in Okinawa before Vietnam came and then I went there and was an adviser to the South Vietnamese army,” he said. “We had to make sure they knew how to do maintenance on their weapons and they got supplies they needed as they were heading into war.”

As lifers in the military, the couple would travel a lot. In 1965 they went to Germany.

They were a couple who traveled together, but she could not know all of what he was assigned to do. At times, especially in Vietnam, it got quite intense and fear became very real for her. She recalls a time in 1963 that was especially troubling.

“Yes, I was scared,” she said. “It was terrible. You don’t hear from him, four, five, six months and they can’t tell you where they are. The children and I had a passport to go to Saigon. Just before I was supposed to go, they canceled our trip. Then they bombed Saigon. So, if we would’ve gone, we’d have probably been bombed. And when he was there, there was no correspondence. When you did get letters, they would come in stacks and you had to organize the post dates to find the right sequence.”

The planning for the unknown was a reality for many soldiers at that time and she recounts a time when her husband revealed those plans.

“In the town of Elsie, Michigan, where Norman grew up, and I call that Conklintown, he bought a mobile home with a glassed-in front porch on a beautiful lot a few blocks from his parents,” she said. “Years later I asked him why he bought that. He said, ‘because I wanted you to have a roof over your head if I didn’t come back.’ And I knew that his parents would take care of me and my two sons.”

After the couple moved to Germany, Joyce decided that she wanted to get a job, but they were few and far between as most of the locals were securing all the employment. She decided to go big or go home and ended up applying at international mogul – IBM in spite of people telling her that she would never be able to get a job there. She got hired and was trained to do programs and research and gained some valuable experience that helped her in her future workplace endeavors. (Such as working in the Bladen County courthouse.)

“I’ve had some of the best jobs in the world,” she said. “I wanted to work. When I told some of the people in Norman’s unit that I was going to go down and get a job at IBM, they laughed at me. I knew enough German that I learned from my wonderful landlady and knew enough to get me through the guard station at IBM. The man who interviewed me told me that I must take a test. So, I took the test and he said to me, ‘Frau Conklin, you did very well on the test, I think I have a job for you.’”

In 1968, five years in a high security position in Vietnam, Norman decided that he needed a reassignment for a while and he went into recruiting. They sent the couple to Benton Harbor, Michigan, where they bought a home on Paw Paw Lake. They began to settle when Norman was once again sent overseas and Joyce wanted to work to keep busy.

“I was the first woman hired into Whirlpool’s research facility,” she said. “And I was so proud. First woman into something in that era. I went and bought pants suits because I was working with all men. Someone came in and said, ‘they are going to send you home today because you are not allowed to wear slacks.’ I said, ‘nobody’s going to see my behind in a frock in this environment.’ Well, they then changed the dress code to being able to wear pants suits. It opened the door for many women to change their wardrobes.”

The job was good, but the climate on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan was not – for about eight months out of the year.

“It was too damn cold in Michigan,” she said. “Whirlpool actually owned the banks of Lake Michigan with only one road in. Norman was in Germany and I just got fed up with having to go out, plow the drive, push it out and make my way to Whirlpool in ice and snow. One day I thought, ‘I’m going home.’ I called Norm and said that I wanted orders for Fort Bragg to store my furniture because I’m going home. And you’re welcome to come.”

When Norman came home, he couldn’t get into Fort Bragg, but instead, the military sent him to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. They did that for a while, Joyce in Bladen and Norman in Oklahoma, but once again, Joyce made a family decision.

“I went out to visit him and I got back here and said ‘pack it up boys,’” she said. “I told Norman, I’m coming out – we’re going to live like a family again. We not going to live like this.”

The family officially parted ways with the military in 1978 with Norman’s retirement.

Although retirement from one area opened doors in other areas, the couple have since run a bed-and-breakfast for 19 years in Plymouth, North Carolina, purchased an old military school for aspirations of making an elaborate tea room and wedding and gathering venue. After that it was off to Lumberton mall where they ran an antique shop and most recently back to Elizabethtown where they leased space in the downtown antique shop – Main Street Treasures owned by Jane Skipper Priest for the past three years.

After three years, there will be a new re-leasing and the Conklins are awaiting their new marching orders and are eagerly anticipating their next adventure.

When they were asked what inspires them to keep working, Norman said, “What are we going to sit around for?” and Joyce said, “We are workaholics, it’s what we’ve always been, it’s what we’ll always be.”

She was slowed down in the past few years as health issues prompted her to have open-heart surgery. With Norm at her side, they not only faced that challenge, but got through it with flying colors. And after she recovered, they got out of the hospital and hit the ground running.

After 64 years of marriage, the couple have some hidden gems for longevity.

“We don’t fight,” he said. “Why should you… what are you going to gain? I’m proud of my wife – she is just a good person. I wouldn’t say anything against her at all.”

“Love who you marry,” she said. “Respect who you marry, respect what he does for a living. Now I know we’re elderly and he calls me a ‘jack-in-the-box’ because I am up and down all the time, but he loves me just for who I am. I don’t know all the reasons why I love him so, all I know is that I do. We also don’t make each other so mad that it becomes a problem.”

As they get older, their relationship grows better like fine wine.

“I know he’s 86 and we’re both aging,” she said. “But this man has stood by me through open-heart surgery, all my illnesses and he waits on me.”

Two hidden gems in Bladen County with stories to tell, books to write and antiques to sell. One thing is certain; they will never run out of things to do and people should not be shocked to see Joyce open one more business or Norman jump out of at least one more airplane.

Mark DeLap is a journalist, photographer and the editor and general manager of the Bladen Journal. To email him, send a message to: mdelap@bladenjournal.com