Two Chattanooga couples just celebrated 70 years of marriage

Amos Greene, 97, and Annie Greene, 94, talk about their lives together from their Riverside Drive dining room. They've been married for 70 years.
Amos Greene, 97, and Annie Greene, 94, talk about their lives together from their Riverside Drive dining room. They've been married for 70 years.

For many couples, making a marriage last 70 years is a far-off dream. For two Chattanooga couples, the Greenes and the Ferrells, the dream came true.

Bob and Virginia Ferrell, 91 and 88 respectively, celebrated their 70th anniversary on June 11. Amos and Annie Greene, 97 and 94, marked 70 years together on June 16.

Both couples say they haven't lost their passion for life or for each other. But they say the world was a vastly different place in 1946.

"There have been a lot of changes," says Amos Green. "You take when we were in high school, the schools were segregated black and white."

The Ferrells remember renting a sizable house for $38 a month and toting home two red wagons full of groceries for $20.

They say that whatever life brought them, they faced it together.

The Greenes

Amos Greene and Annie Billingslea met on their daily bus ride to Booker T. Washington High School. The school bus picked up Amos first, in Hixson, then Annie at her home on Riverside Drive.

"We were always talking on the bus," says Annie at their home, lined with pictures of their family throughout the years. "I'll just say that we were in high school together, and that made a difference.

"Eventually we got [old] enough to write letters to each other," she explains. They'd pass them to each other on the bus.

The two maintained contact until Amos graduated from high school three years before Annie and joined the 1889th Engineer Aviation Battalion, where he assisted in building airfields from 1942 to 1946, through the entirety of World War II.

"We lost contact after I graduated," says Amos.

When he got lonesome during his military service, though, he thought about the girl he always talked to on the bus. Fortunately, he remembered her home address.

"So I just wrote her a letter and started that connection," he says.

After leaving the military, he utilized his mechanical skills working at Annie's father's garage for five years. Later, he worked as a carrier for the U.S. Postal Service. In 1970, he was promoted to a Postal Service Equal Employment Opportunity counselor and held that position until he retired.

Annie earned a college degree that led to a job as a teacher and elementary school principal. She served at Joseph B. Smith, Clara Carpenter, Orchard Knob, Roland Hayes and Frank H. Trotter elementary schools and also at schools in Chickamauga, Ga., among others.

"I was able to get along with all the the things that came in," says Annie.

Even though Amos lived in Hixson, segregation prevented him from attending Hixson High School, which was all white. He attended Howard High School for several months but could not afford the fee for being a county resident in a city school, so he transferred to Booker T. Washington.

"I think putting the schools together [shed] a whole different light on education," Amos says, recalling that the textbooks used at Booker T. Washington were passed down from white high schools.

"And [the white schools] were always a grade or more ahead," he says.

But when it comes to making marriages last, the Greenes have advice for couples.

Amos first thanks God for his help, then offers a more concrete piece of counseling: "I find that you can get along in a marriage if you let your wife have a little authority."

Annie says key points include listening to your parents' advice, working and fulfilling your duties.

"We managed to make it through the church, through our parents and did things available for us to do through jobs," she says. "And not only that, I tell the people, and the world, that the best thing the Lord has done for us after being together for so long, after being together for six years, he gave us the one and only," says Annie, pointing toward their only son, Michael.

The couple also have three grandchildren.

The Ferrells

Bob Ferrell and Virginia Rooks, a Chattanooga native, met while both were working at Bob's sister's 36th Street Dry Cleaners in Miami.

"We met in the meantime and got married," says Virginia, who goes by Jenny.

The couple married in Bob's hometown of Cairo, Ga., then returned to Miami, where their two daughters were born and reared. They also have two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Both of their daughters now live in Tampa, Fla.

In Miami, Bob worked for Interstate Life and Accident Insurance. Eventually, he was transferred to Tampa, then advanced through the ranks until he was offered a job at the insurer's home office in Chattanooga.

"I said, 'Let's just take it,'" Virginia recalls, sitting in the family's photo-filled living room.

Virginia was a stay-at-home mom until the kids were almost grown, then she went to work at Barfield, which specialized in remodeling planes and manufacturing parts.

Like the Greenes, the Ferrells describe living in a different world in the years right after they married.

At the close of World War II, they rented a room from an elderly lady, Bob says, "and we lived there for quite awhile until we could find a house."

"The living conditions today, and the expenses of things have improved many, many, many times from back in those days," he says.

Before Bob and Virginia married, a television in a home was as rare as a head-size diamond. "The first time we heard about a TV and saw one someplace, we bought it," recalls Bob.

The most important advice the Ferrells offer for their marital success is communication, they say.

"You have to learn to communicate because you're not going to always agree on the same thing all the time," says Bob. "You can't get mad and run off and all this kind of stuff."

And keep communication open between family members, no matter what, Virginia says.

"If you do something, go and apologize, and it's gone. We just take it from there," she says. "I'm not saying everything is honey all the way, but you just have to learn to work it out."

And beyond that is compatibility between the couple.

"You can't have everything one way, so you just have to learn to give here and take [there] and spread it out," she says.

Contact Hayden Seay at Life@timesfreepress.com.

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