Staying Together

Two couples married 60 years apiece still live two blocks from each other in Rockwood. Here, they remember life back in the day and ruminate on what it means and what it takes to spend more than a half-century with one person.

By Sharon Nesbit

The Gresham Outlook, Nov 2, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

Carole Archer / The Gresham Outlook

Morrie and Marie Portin reminisce about the old days in their Rockwood home, which is filled with family photos and portraits. Morrie supported his family of five children with his photography businesses, Gateway Portrait Studio and Race Track Photo Service.

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Rockwood was bare as a baby’s bottom in the 1950s when the first young families came looking for a place to raise their broods of children.

Roy and Catherine Fall and four of their children (the fifth came after they moved to Rockwood) arrived in 1955 wanting a corner lot. They got a basement thrown in for free because they bought the “show” house on the corner.

“Twelve thousand dollars, $89 a month, and they promised the payment would never go over $100,” remembers Roy, who drove a truck for Albina Fuel.

“And we worried about how we would ever make the payments,” Catherine says.

Two blocks west and two years later, Morrie and Marie Portin found a house that would hold their five children, five bedrooms, counting two in the basement.

A photographer, Morrie owned Gateway Portrait Studio and parked a yellow Hillman van in front. He worked two jobs to support his family, and she sold Avon.

A new “Leave It To Beaver” community began to rise around them, a Kienow’s grocery on the corner where a berry field used to be. A Rexall drug and an ice cream place named John and Mary’s where the kids took 5 or 10 cents and bought a treat. A barbershop on the corner.

A half-century later both couples, still with the same spouses, are in the same houses. The old neighbors turned up in the same edition of The Outlook with side-by-side announcements of their with 60th anniversary parties.

“We were married three days apart in 1947, lived all these years in the same neighborhood, and our kids went to school together,” marvels Roy Fall. So he went down to his basement lair, similar to the den where Morrie Portin hangs out in his house, to clip and laminate a copy of the Portins’ anniversary story. Then he hiked down the street and gave it to them.

Longevity. Staying put. How do you live 60 years with the same person?

“Grin and bear it,” says Morrie Portin. “Give and take,” adds his tiny wife, Marie.

“You overlook a lot of things,” he says, and she turns in her chair to interrupt him with a snort. Recovering quickly, he suavely adds, “You treat your spouse like she’s real important, which she is.”

Nice save, Morrie.

In considering the same question, Roy Fall says, “You put up with a lot.”

Catherine adds dryly: “We couldn’t afford to split up.”

“And the kids keep you together a lot,” he says.

But did they ever consider divorce? “Never, ever,” he breathes.

Like most couples their age, the women were primarily responsible for child rearing while their husbands worked to bring home paychecks. Morrie Portin held two jobs, the photograph studio, which often took him away on weekends, and in the 1960s he became the photo finish photographer at the Multnomah Kennel Club. He eventually purchased and still owns Race Track Photo Service.

Roy Fall worked 35 years, mostly on the 4 p.m. to midnight shift, delivering fuel. His children were asleep when he got off work. He was asleep when they left for school. By the time they returned he was leaving for work.

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