When Frank and Marjorie (Marjie) Schaben gather family and friends around the dining room table in their quaint Oak Park home on North Harvey, time tells all. A grandfather clock Frank built chimes in the hours. Art on the wall, painted by Frank, depicts an Aztec calendar and is emblematic of their widespread travels.
Several military medals, plus an array of ribbons, sit in the bureau drawer. They transport him to the dark days when he became a WWII hero. For Marjie, they surface painful memories of when her sweetheart was in danger and so far away.
On Oct. 14, Frank, 92, and Marjie (formerly Marjorie Rivera), 88, marked their 70th wedding anniversary. Two daughters (Jeannine and Patricia), seven grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren later, they say every moment of their long-lasting marriage has been the time of their life.
Got a match?
Frank comes from Earling, Iowa, a small German Catholic farm town 40 miles from Missouri Valley, Iowa, Marjie’s hometown.
In 1938, their life-long love affair when 19-year-old Frank spied 15-year-old Marjie through a sweet shop window when a boy in her walking group tapped on the pane to ask if he had a match. Frank did, so he came out and met Marjie.
One thing led to another and their first date, a movie on Easter Sunday, evolved into their own classic romance, filled with twists and turns and a happy ending.
At first, though, Marjie wasn’t sure if her parents would allow her to go out with the older, out-of-town trumpet player who performed in two dance bands.
What she didn’t know until later was that Marjie’s mother went to the local rectory on the day before their first date to do a background check on Frank. With the priest’s approval, Mom gave Marjie the green light. Her father, however, was stuck on red.
“When my Dad found out what my mother had done, he said, ‘She’s too young, She’s not going out,'” Marjie recalls, laughing. “My Mom said, ‘Wait until you meet him tomorrow.’ After he met him, he thought he was an OK egg.”
In 1941, the couple wed in Chicago. Frank, 22, had a good-paying job at Pullman Aircraft, building DC-3s, a position he hoped would enable him to avoid being drafted. He was also newly married with a baby and another one on the way. At 6-feet-3, he weighed 135 pounds … wet. That was supposed to help, too.
It didn’t.
The third year of their marriage the Army called Frank, and he spent 16 weeks in basic training at Fort Blanding, Fla., before shipping overseas.
Frank was luckier than most. Even so, he did not escape being wounded in combat — or becoming a celebrated war hero.
During the Battle of the Bulge, with machine gun fire flying overhead, he continued to give first aid to wounded soldiers. For that selfless action, Frank received the prestigious Bronze Star.
Another time, while walking down a road in France, a German sniper shot him in the leg. That in-the-line-of-duty injury earned him a Purple Heart — and a three-month stay in a military hospital.
The actual medals did not land in his hands until 58 years later, in 2003. He is still awaiting the arrival of his Silver Star, he says.
“I didn’t know he was in combat,” says Marjie, who at the time was living with her mom and two older sisters, both registered nurses. “He was always writing me that he was undergoing training in the mountains, and then I get this letter that he is in a hospital outside London with a bullet in his leg. I was home with two babies and he didn’t want to worry me.”
When the war ended, Frank had five more months to serve, so the military assigned him to the postal unit in Paris. That was when and where he picked up his professional skills as a photographer, which later became his avocation.
“All my family has liked to pose for pictures … lots of pictures,” he says.
When their earth stood still
Mechanically skilled he refurbished seven Jaguars and numerous other classy antique autos with a buddy.
In 1964, while driving one of his prized Jaguars, Frank almost lost his life at the intersection of East and Jackson. A Volkswagen rear-ended the sports car, causing Frank’s foot to hit the pedal, which propelled the car into a pole, a tree, and finally a brick wall.
Fortunately, a friend lived at that intersection and, hearing the crash, shouted out to his wife to call for help while he grabbed towels and became the first responder. A priest held those towels to Frank’s bloody, “scalped” head until the ambulance arrived. At the hospital he received 200-plus stitches to his head, and over the next year or so, he underwent numerous reconstructive surgeries to reassemble his facial features.
To help him “unrattle his brains,” his daughter Jeannine gifted her dad with a book about Jackson Pollack, which is how Frank took up painting.
“I thought, ‘Anyone could do that,’ and I made a few paintings that look remarkably like Pollack’s work.” A few friends display his work in their homes and offices, and a couple of their granddaughters have “home galleries,” note the proud grandparents.
After enduring a long hospital stay, and requiring yet more time off to heal afterwards, his employer let him go, a practice that wouldn’t fly nowadays, Marjie says.
About that time, she went back to college to obtain a degree, and by age 40 started teaching Spanish in District 89 in Maywood and Melrose Park. When Frank was gainfully employed again, she scaled back and they resumed their passion for traveling. To date, the Schabens have taken 12 luxury cruises in some spectacular sites, Frank says.
“Before we got married I told Frank I wanted to travel,” Marjie says. But first, a neighbor had to hypnotize her to overcome her fear of flying.
Dancing through life
The late ’60s ushered in their tango days, and they were pretty good, says Frank. But not at first.
“The dance instructor didn’t have much hope for me,” Frank recalls, laughing.
Without missing a beat, Marjie cuts in, noting that Frank kept saying, “I’m not taking any more dance lessons because according to the guy, I don’t know my left foot from my right foot.”
“I told him, ‘Please I think it’s helping,’ because I was starting to get arthritis in my right knee.”
Frank acquiesced, which has been his motto throughout their marriage — when necessary.
About four years ago, Marjie put away her tango shoes after taking a terrible fall. She recuperated, but not without adding a cane to her accessories. But that doesn’t dim the effervescent memories of their prize-winning tango days.
“On the cruises, people would come up to our table and ask us to do another tango for them. So when we would walk into the ballroom, the orchestra would stop what they were doing and start playing the tango for us,” Frank recalls.
Their marriage has lasted seven decades partly because they grew up in southwest Iowa where Marjie says couples just don’t get divorced. They don’t like to argue, either, which helps.
“It’s been 70 wonderful years that have gone by so fast and peacefully,” says Marjie, as he points to a picture of her in an Easter hat from a long time ago.
“Our life together has been a highlight for me,” Frank says, as the grandfather clock chimes in another hour.