Love still blooms, 60 years later

Former prisoner of war Frank Driver meets nursing student Jeanie and signs on for six decades plus

By Sharon Nesbit

The Gresham Outlook, Apr 27, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (3 Reader comments)

John Klicker / The Gresham Outlook

Jeanie and Frank Driver reminisce in their Corbett home on Friday, April 13. The Drivers say they’re proud to be still thinking and living independently in the home they built in the late 1940s.

ADVERTISEMENTS

"We are still in our house, thank God,” says Jeanie Driver, married 60 years on May 10.

She and husband, Frank, were newlyweds when they built their home just outside of Springdale, adding on rooms as three children came along. Even pregnant, Jeanie helped pour the concrete. The house was first planned on the hill where the view is, but “some of the worst winters ever” in 1947 and 1948 caused them to hunker down below the slope out of the wind.

Their home nests behind a sculpted hedge, in a lavish garden of pink and white, the kind of place that should have a big old tree with a swing in the yard. And it does.

Inside it is warm and tidy and filled with treasures of people who lead interesting lives. Guests browse it like a museum to spot the letter that Frank Driver got from President Harry Truman, a welcome home after Frank’s three years, three months and 10 days as a prisoner of the Japanese in World War II. In the laundry room is a certificate from a horticulturist who named a daffodil “Jeanie Driver.”

Jeanie: “Just before we went up to Seattle to get married the clutch went out of the car and it cost $40, about half what we could afford. We got married in a tiny wedding, had a little reception and then drove as far as Tacoma where we rented a motel. We overslept and had to pay extra. What with the clutch, we were pretty much out of money. We ate our wedding cake. All of it. We weren’t proud.”

The Drivers were married May 10, 1947. “Propinquity” brought them together, Jeanie says. She was a nursing student at Good Samaritan Hospital when Frank first spotted her. He worked there in the mechanical department, still recovering from the malnutrition he suffered as a POW.

“He asked me if I was a student and when I said yes, he said he’d like to date me but that I wasn’t worth losing his job over,” Jeanie remembers. Another old photo shows Jeanie at her capping ceremony in the days when nurses wore stiffly starched caps. As a full graduate she was legal to date, in Frank’s view.

Neighbor Dennis Bryson describes the Drivers as a great comedy team. “If you remember the radio show about The Bickersons in the 1950s, Frank and Jeanie would put them to shame.”

Jeanie: “I remember when Frank was teaching me to drive.”

Frank, holding his head in his hands: “Oh, that was awful.”

Jeanie: “My sister said then, ‘That was Clue No. 2,’ and Frank’s mom said, ‘If you two really mean to get together, stop the lessons. She was my best friend.’ ”

When Frank’s mother, Edna Mae Driver, died in 1961, Jeanie brought a native maple from her yard and planted it front of their house. That is where the swing is. The garden is a museum, and Jeanie, respected as a horticulturist, knows the origins of each plant.

As a concession to her 81 years, this year she will not plant a garden, relying on the prolific produce offered by her neighbors. She no longer raises the daffodils, except for fun. She became a grower in 1984 when Corbett’s pioneer growers, Stella and Murray Evans, sold her part of their stock.

“We were growing garlic at the time,” Jeanie remembers. “I figured daffodils would be more fun than garlic.” She became a regional director for the American Daffodil Society. Daffodils and her nursing career in urology (she was president of the American Urological Association) gave the couple opportunities to travel.

At first, Frank worked nights so he could build their house. Later he would join American Sterilizer, traveling to various hospitals. The first part of their house was meant to be a garage and was 20-by-20 feet. Jeanie points to the place where their bed nook was and remembers when the pump froze that supplied their water from the creek below.

1 | 2 Next Page >>