While he was trying to stay afloat after swimming from his downed naval ship, all Jesse Linam wanted to do was come home to marry the young woman he had met before enlisting.
“I asked God to give me strength to get to that ship because I wanted to go home and marry her and that I would raise a family and dedicate them back to His service,” Jesse said.
The Linams, Jesse and Irene, celebrated their 78th wedding anniversary this year. Jesse turns 103 in July and Irene will celebrate 95 years Sunday.
The couple’s love story started with a chance meeting in 1943.
“I knew the boy that he was running around with. They came to my mother’s house and saw me and that’s when we got all fixed up,” Irene said. “My mother kept saying to me, ‘I’m going to tear you up if you don’t let them boys get out of here.’” Irene was 15 and Jesse was 22.
“When I first met her, I can’t remember now who lied about her age. I thought she was 17- or 18-yearsold,” Jesse added.
Shortly after they met, Jesse went to Little Rock, Ark., to receive his orders for his placement in service during World War II.
When he returned home in 1945, he and Irene married, Jesse began working for Southwest Electric Power Company and the couple began building their family in Texarkana. They had two sons: Charles Elmer, born in 1947, and Larry Clifton, born in 1949.
The couple agrees that one secret to the success of their marriage has been never dwelling too long on small spats. “We got crossways with each other a time or two but it was nothing ever so serious that it couldn’t be overlooked. We’d go to bed and kiss each other goodnight, then start a new the next day and forget all about what was wrong or what we were arguing about,” Jesse said.
Jesse and Irene remembered one particular night that really put their relationship into perspective.
“I got a little more inebriated than I should have,” he said with a chuckle. “She waited until we got home. She had Charles and Larry with her and she looked at me and said, ‘Now you’ve got to make up your mind. You decide whether you want to drink this stuff or you want us. You can’t have both.’
“I had a gallon of homemade whiskey. And when I realized how serious she was, I poured that whole gallon of homemade whisily key we bought for $10 down the sink. I was through drinking.”
“And he was,” Irene agreed. “That was it. It had to be if he wanted the three of us.”
The couple moved to DeKalb a few years into their marriage. Jesse continued working for SWEPCO but said he had a job on the side working to wire the electricity to newly built homes in the area.
“In order to provide the best for them, outside of my monthly salary I got from SWEPCO, I would wire a few houses at night,” Jesse said. “Sometimes it would be 1 o’clock in the morning when I would come home, go to bed and sleep long enough to get up the next morning, eat breakfast and go back to work. I made a little extra money that way so I could provide for them everything they wanted in life.”
When Irene joined the Order of the Eastern Star, Jesse, a Mason, even bought her a fur coat because he said he “wanted her to look important.” The couple said they continued their membership of the respective organizations until their ages prevented them from attending and performing their regular duties.
The couple has survived a few tragedies in their 78 years together. They lost their first born, Charles, at 13 years old to cancer. In 1980, their 7-year-old granddaughter, Mary Regina, was killed in a shooting at the First Baptist Church in Daingerfield, Texas. They lost Larry in 2022 at the age of 72.
“I promised God that I would put them back in his service and, sure enough, He kept his word,” Jesse said. “I made a contract with God and I had to keep it whether I liked it or not.”
Jesse is the last surviving member of his parent’s eight children. He is also the last remaining sailor from his naval ship during WWII. Irene is the last of two children.
“I have the privilege of letting people know that I don’t have an enemy in the world because I’ve outlived all of them,” Jesse joked.
The couple said their marriage has lasted because they are partners and best friends.
“Not only is he my best friend, he’s my love,” Irene said with a smile.
“I never did have anyone else as my partner,” Jesse laughed. “I got her out of the cradle.”
