HARDWOOD LAKE – Living within your means and working together as a team has kept their relationship strong over the years.
Ken and Doreen Genrick recently celebrated 60 years of marriage, and reflected on some of their past with the Gazette.
As it happens, Ken Genrick and Doreen Keller first met at a wedding, but things didn’t get more serious until later.
Doreen recalled that Ken, who knew Doreen’s uncle, would try to persuade her uncle to bring Doreen and her sister along to the dances at McArthurs Mills.
“But we wouldn’t go until he came and asked himself,” Doreen said with a laugh.
Eventually he did ask and the pair realized they had more in common than a mutual joy for music and dancing.
The couple married on September 17, 1952. Ken’s family provided the pig which was the meat served at the dinner, and his mom made the wedding cake. According to Doreen, her mother did the rest, advising them to get married in the fall because then she’d have everything out of the garden. A few days before the wedding day the neighbour, a women, came over and helped with baking and preparations.
After being married at St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church by Pastor Pfeiffer, who had baptized and confirmed Doreen, a reception dinner was held on her family’s property. A platform was assembled and tables and dishes contributed from the community members all over the countryside.
According to Doreen it was a big crowd because everybody could take off a day’s work.
“When we were married you were lucky to get six bucks a day for wages,” Ken said.
They were wed on a Wednesday as was customary back then. Doreen said that it was just the way, and the expression if you married later in the week was said “late flit short sit,” or that the marriage would not last.
They started married life at Ken’s parents homestead, where they remain today on Genricks Road in Hardwood Lake.
Along with working various jobs Ken took on such as logging and trucking lumber, and the farm kept them busy year round with gardening, harvesting and cattle. Over the years they had cows, horses, pigs and hens.
The Genricks raised three sons, Herbert, Mervin and David. Doreen joked that her first two sons were their first family, as David came along 12 years later.
In later years, all three sons would go on to marry, build homes, and raise families of their own on Genricks Road.
Today the couple is proud to share that they have six grand-children and three great grand-children.
Some of Ken and Doreen’s favourite memories include taking trips together. The couple enjoyed travelling across Canada, and making stops along the way whenever they pleased. They were proud and appreciative of the beauty in this country.
“We’ve been around. I got my foot wet in the Atlantic, but I didn’t get it wet in the Pacific,” Ken said.
“We’ve been out west twice but we didn’t get close to the water,” Doreen explained.
Maintaining a healthy sense of humour seems to have been passed along to their offspring.
Story continues in the October 3, 2012 issue of The Valley Gazette.