By Alan Suderman
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

In 1945, Roger and Ginny Norton caught a bus to Las Vegas from Los Angeles, took a cab to a minister’s home, and got married.

“We asked the cab driver to be our best man,” Ginny Norton says.

Now, 5 children, 18 grandchildren, and 17 great-grandchildren later, the Nortons still act like a young couple in love.

“He’s my best friend,” Ginny Norton says, “my dearest love.”

They met on the campus of Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y.

“He looked like the prince in the Ivory Tower,” she says, referring to a play she’d seen in high school.

Started with a blind date
They were later set up on a blind date and have been together ever since. When war interrupted school, he joined the Navy and she enrolled in the Marines. They were both on a short leave when they married in Las Vegas.

“We met in downtown Los Angeles, went to see Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, left in the middle, planned our future on a park bench in Pershing Square, and that’s how we wound up on a bus to Las Vegas,” Ginny Norton says.

Roger Norton went back to school and got a degree in chemistry. He worked for DuPont Chemicals as an instrument engineer. Ginny Norton taught at public schools when the couple moved to Houston.

“I took early retirement [from DuPont] before it was either fashionable or lucrative,” Roger Norton chuckles. He continued working for various chemical companies in Houston before deciding to fully retire in 1989.

Greatest accomplishment
The Nortons say that raising five children has been their greatest accomplishment. “Both of us are most proud of our five talented, caring children—caring of one another and of their parents—and we’re proud of our very happy marriage,” she says.

Spending time together
The couple enjoy spending their time bird watching, both at Eagle’s Trace and at a cottage they own in High Island in the middle of a bird sanctuary. They say doing things together is one the of the secrets to having a good relationship.