Stories of love

By Casey Gillis
The News & Advance
Published: February 19, 2008

The story of how her parents met has always been one of Barbara Wood’s favorites to tell.

It was the spring of 1933 when Wood’s mother, Elizabeth Pote, took her family’s new car out for a spin near her Lynch Station home.

During the drive, something caught her eye. “She saw this handsome young man thumbing a ride,” Wood says.

Back then, hitchhiking was common because fewer people owned cars, and it didn’t carry the same stigma it does today.

Elizabeth, who was 24 at the time, recognized the man from her church and after she got farther down the road, pulled over.

“She thought he was nice looking, and he was carrying his baseball bat and his glove. She knew he was going into town to play baseball,” Wood says. “She just decided, ‘I may as well stop and pick him up.’

“There weren’t a lot of ladies then who even drove cars, so I guess it was just a lucky thing that they met that day.”

Once Elizabeth picked up the man, 29-year-old Aubrey Eubank, that was it for both of them.

“They didn’t go with anyone else after that,” Wood says.

It turned out that they both worked for the Lane Co. in Altavista, but had never met before that day. Elizabeth worked in the credit department, and Aubrey in the plant.

The pair married a little less than a year later, on March 30, 1934, in a double wedding with Eubank’s cousin.

Their wedding day also happened to fall on the day after Elizabeth’s father’s birthday.

“He always said (Aubrey) was the best birthday gift he had ever gotten,” Wood says.

Wood, their only child, was born in 1936 and has fond memories of her parents’ loving relationship.

“He always called her ‘Sugar,’ and she always called him ‘Darling.’ They didn’t address each other by their real names. That’s what they always said.”

They were inseparable, and often spent weekends boating and fishing at a home they owned on Leesville Lake.

“They did everything together,” Wood says. “They went to church together, to the beach together and to the lake together. They cooked together, and they cleaned together.”

And they balanced each other out.

“My mom said he never had any money in his pocket because anytime somebody at work needed a loan, he’d give them the last dollar out of his pocket,” Wood says.

“Dad always said he’d never have had a penny if it hadn’t been for (my mother).”

Wood says she always strived to find a similar relationship and a man like her father.

“He was wonderful. Kind and good and loving,” she says. “He taught Sunday school and was a deacon in the church.

“I always looked for a husband just like my dad.”

And she got one.

Wood and her husband, Orville, have been married for almost 32 years and live in Evington. They met when Orville’s sister, who worked with Wood at Altavista High School, tried to set them up on a date.

Orville worked at Leggett’s department store, and Wood went in to see him at work one day.

“She sent me over to meet him,” Wood says. “I got there, and saw him at the back of the building, surrounded by four girl clerks. I turned around and went down the escalator and left.”

They finally did meet when he called her a few days later and asked her to go to church with him.

“We pulled up to his house to pick up his parents to go to church, and I looked at the mountains behind it,” Wood says. “I thought, ‘This is where I want to live.’ I tried really hard to keep him.

“He’s a lot like my dad. He’s a lot more like my dad now than he was then.”

Orville says Aubrey was one of the greatest people he’s ever met.

“He was very strict, but he was a good man,” Orville says. “He understood other people’s situations.”

Aubrey retired from Lane in 1970 after more than 25 years of service, and Elizabeth followed four years later.

Both got sick in their later years and died within two years of each other.

Aubrey died first in 1984, nine days before their 50th wedding anniversary.

Before his death, Wood says Elizabeth had been struggling with arthritis and said she didn’t want to celebrate their anniversary. She later changed her mind, but then Aubrey said he didn’t want to celebrate.

“I think he knew he was feeling bad and knew it was going to happen,” Wood says.

After his death, Elizabeth “missed him a lot, and it was really hard because she was by herself,” Wood says.

“On birthdays and Christmas and Valentine’s Day, there were always flowers and gifts. After he passed away, we, every holiday, had to take flowers to the cemetery. If she couldn’t do it, we would.”

and the one that got away

Lynchburg resident Grace Mohr’s love story doesn’t end with the same happily ever after, but she wouldn’t change it for anything.

“I don’t have any regrets at all,” she says.

Mohr met the love of her life when she was in her 40s.

It was in the 1970s, and the Charlotte County native was living and working in Roanoke when she found Jesse. He was a decade older than she was, and they met when both were renting rooms in the same house.

They quickly hit it off, bonding over their shared love of country music. It wasn’t long before Jesse, who was from South Boston, was spending time with Grace and her family back in Charlotte County.

“He would drive me out to Charlotte County on weekends, then go on to his home in South Boston,” she says. “(Then he’d) pick me up on Sunday night and drive me back to Roanoke. He used to eat supper quite often with my parents and myself before (we left) for Roanoke on Sundays.”

During their courtship, Jesse also taught her how to drive.

“He was very calm and collected,” she says. “I said, ‘Jesse, aren’t you afraid of riding with me?’ And he said, ‘No, indeed Grace, I taught you.’”

Mohr says his actions never ceased to amaze her.

“He was just so very, very kind and good to me,” she says. “He was forever giving me gifts. He was a person everybody liked.”

“We got along perfectly.”

But their relationship didn’t last. Mohr’s father died in 1975 and before his death, she promised him she’d take care of her mother.

“I had an obligation because at that point, both of my brothers were married.”

Shortly thereafter, Jesse proposed during one of their drives from Roanoke to Charlotte County.

“He stopped the car and took my hand and said, ‘Grace, will you marry me?’ He shocked me,” she says. “I have to admit, I had no idea what he was going to do.”

Mohr says she wanted nothing more than to marry Jesse, but wasn’t going to abandon her mother.

“It’s really difficult to choose between someone you love and your mother,” she says.

She asked Jesse to move in with them in Charlotte County, but he couldn’t because it was too far away from his job in Roanoke.

“I didn’t want him to sacrifice his job,” she says. “It was rough. I would’ve liked to marry him. But family comes first.”

Mohr never told her mother that Jesse proposed.

“She’d have said, ‘Grace you should have gone and married him.’ She thought she could’ve stayed at the house by herself … and she couldn’t.”

Despite the heartbreak, Mohr says she and Jesse stayed in touch over the years, meeting for the occasional dinner.

“He would call me on the phone at my mother’s home,” she says. “My mom would tell me, ‘Don’t break your neck running down those steps. It’s Jesse.’”

The last time Mohr saw Jesse was in 1989, when she visited Roanoke.

“He took my hand and said he would love me always,” she recalls.

A year later, he died of a heart attack at age 70. Mohr got the news over the phone from their old landlord.

“The day that she called me, I went all to pieces.”

Mohr says it’s still hard for her to think about the one that got away.

“You just have your memory of the person. It’s just a memory left, and it can be devastating.”

But she still takes great joy in remembering the good times.

“When you get to be 79,” she says, “it’s fun.”