Sebastopol couple who traveled 30,000 miles with kids celebrate 75th wedding anniversary

Bill and Dorothy Owens met in 1945 as co-workers at an Indiana factory that produced more than 6,000 fighter planes during World War II.

Dorothy, then 22, was a genuine Rosie the Riveter, connecting fuselage sections of P-47 Thunderbolt planes with rivets, while Bill, 21, was an inspector at the Republic Aviation Corp. plant that employed more than 5,000 women and men, lifting Evansville from depression to prosperity in less than a year.

Introduced by a co-worker of Bill’s, the two were surprised to find they hailed from small towns 20 miles apart in Warrick County, Indiana, and their first date was at a county fair in Evansville.

Married in 1946, the couple embarked on a nearly decadelong migration, crisscrossing the nation from the Florida Panhandle to Alaska, staying briefly in more than 80 places in 18 states as Bill worked on a traveling crew for the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey.

Living out of a trailer on the road and at survey sites, the nomadic couple covered about 30,000 miles in close quarters with their first three children, born from 1947 to 1951.

“Oh, we loved it. We got to see a lot of things and we got paid,” said Bill, a robust, affable 97-year-old, nearly a year younger than Dorothy, 98.

Their son, Don, died in 2012, and third daughter, Cindy Owens-Baird, lives in Salt Lake City.

On Monday, William Adam Owens and the former Dorothy Jean Springston will celebrate their 75th wedding anniversary with a quiet gathering of family and friends where they live on daughter Sue Owens’ property in the rural hills west of Sebastopol.

“I don’t think I ever dreamed of that,” Bill said, relaxing on the patio last week. “I think we’re very blessed to make it this far.”

“She’s definitely the boss,” he said, hinting at the basis for their durable relationship. “I get the last word, though. You know what that is: ‘Yes, ma’am.’”

Rising at 4 a.m. daily, Bill’s daily regimen includes a half-mile walk — “out to the fig tree and back” — working out with 3-pound dumbbells, writing and reading the newspaper.

Dismayed that his golfing days are over, Bill is nonetheless considering an October return to the Huntsman World Senior Games at St. George, Utah, where he won gold medals in the 100- and 200-yard dashes years ago.

“I’ve gotta dodge the old undertaker, you know,” he said with a chuckle.

With four siblings who were 95 or older when they died, Bill figures longevity may run in his family, and he also never smoked and drank alcohol sparingly.

Disqualified from military duty because of damage to his lungs from tuberculosis he never knew he had, Bill recalls the “doc said I had a tough system. I guess he was right.”

He also avoided stress, which “will kill you,” he said.

“Mom did the worrying,” Sue Owens said.

Dorothy, who spends her days in a wheelchair after breaking her hip in a fall, does jigsaw puzzles, plays cards with granddaughter Charlotte and other family members, and “especially loves to watch the birds and squirrels at the bird feeder,” said daughter Linda Owens of Santa Rosa.

Once an expert sewer and painter, Dorothy can no longer manage those crafts but enjoys telling stories about her childhood, recalling her feelings but scrambling the particulars due to her fading memory.

Asked what riveting fighter planes was like, she said, “Well, it wasn’t hard for me.”

Dorothy, who started work at the aircraft plant in 1942, drove rivets so proficiently she was soon promoted to a job repairing mistakes made by other workers, according to a tribute written by her husband.

Sue Owens created a visual record of the family’s travels, sticking pins in a large map of the United States and connecting them with black thread. Their longest drive was from Indiana to Salinas, crossing about three-fourths of the nation.

Traveling as a group and staying only six weeks to three months in each place, the crew members’ children had one another as childhood friends, Sue said.

“We’d all take care of each other’s kids,” Dorothy recalled, enabling mothers to get out and see the sights.

Bill said he favored Montana and Idaho for the “wide-open spaces,” and recalled an episode in which the survey crew, flown into a remote part of Alaska without their families, ran out of food and shot a moose for sustenance.

Ending their travels in 1955, the Owenses settled for 31 years in Riverside, where Bill worked as chief accountant for a wholesale food distributor, then retired to St. George, Utah, for 23 years.

In 2015, the couple moved to Sue’s property, where she tends chickens, two cashmere goats and a llama.

The fighter plane factory in Evansville where it all began?

Shut down immediately at the war’s end in 1945, it was converted to making Whirlpool washing machines to launder the diapers for millions of baby boomers.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.