Nancy McLaughlin
She was the raven-haired Bell South operator who, like in the black-and-white movies of the day, used a switchboard to connect phone calls.
When Bob Gobble finished his tour of duty during World War II, he came back to the states for his Laura, marrying her the same year -and they've been largely inseparable except for Laura's pneumonia in their 90s.
"I was scared to death of what I had just done," Laura Gobble said playfully with a big grin as they recently looked at their wedding day photo from 1946.
"I was so nervous," Bob Gobble said with his arm around his wife. "I didn't know what I was doing."
And now they are about to mark another milestone.
Laura Gobble turns 100 on May 31, two years after Bob, now 102, making them one of the few centenarian couples on record. After celebrating their 79th wedding anniversary last month, they are just a few years short of the Guinness Book of World Records title for a still-married couple -- even as more than half the country's marriages fail. They credit a strong faith in God, a love of people and the understanding that people will sometimes disagree.
"We've tried to solve our problems before we go to sleep," Bob said. "If you haven't resolved it, it will only get bigger overnight."
Best friends
Siblings, first cousins and childhood friends, they are mostly gone now.
In good health, the two live in their own apartment in a retirement community where they together battled COVID-19. Laura, a people person, is largely deaf now but uses a hearing aid and can read lips. Bob, a natural storyteller who has never met a stranger, uses a new-fangled walker to get around their retirement community building and its recently expanded gym offerings.
"I go to the gym twice a week and somebody said, 'Here's a guy over 100 years old still exercising -- something is wrong with him,'" Bob said with a laugh.
She goes, too.
There is a resilience about them. Bob and Laura survived the Great Depression and fought a war, helped build iconic businesses such as Southern Bell and Southern Railway that would shape America, and instilled a sense of community service and civic pride in places they would later live, like Greensboro.
Wed well before man walked on the moon, they shared a life with both ups and downs.
Yet, his words still put a twinkle in her eye and bring a smile to her lips. She gives him a look and he presses her hand.
"They are each other's best friend," said Frank Moore, who got to know the couple at First Lutheran Church.
When she was a young girl her father lost his job and the family also lost their home. They moved from her hometown of Charlotte to Columbia, S.C.
Her father died when she was 13 and her mother carried the family with her talent as a seamstress. She made dresses for the wives of governors and the other women of high society.
As a child, Laura spent summers with aunts who worked at an orphanage in Charleston, S.C.
"It was the only vacation I had," Laura recalled of playing with the other children there.
After graduating from high school, she went to work for Southern Bell in Columbia as a "plug-pusher" or telephone operator of that day who was given a telephone number and could plug them into a circuit board to connect callers through the PBX system. A friend who worked at the PBX at Fort Jackson told her about a cute guy who came in to call Spartanburg. The military provided soldiers free private phone booths at the PBX to make calls.
Bob had grown up in East Spencer but the family later moved to Spartanburg, where his father worked for Southern Railway. Bob graduated high school and spent two years at Wofford College. However, he had already signed up for the draft and was called into service by 1942. He was stationed at Fort Jackson in South Carolina for basic training.
The friend introduced him to Laura, marking the beginning of their love story.
He took her to a football game in Columbia on that first date and took the late-night bus back to Fort Jackson, he said as he began describing that date.
"Don't tell everything you know," she followed with a laugh.
He was eventually sent to the Pacific Coast in anticipation of invading Japan.
The two had thought about getting married before he was being shipped out to another camp.
"They said we would lose two million soldiers if we invaded Japan," Bob said. "I thought I might not make it back."
He did not want to make her a widow. So they waited.
He was on a ship in the Pacific for 30 days. When he got to the Philippines he was assigned to the 333rd Quartermaster Battalion, which consisted of 21 company clerks handling sick leave and other paperwork and had a sergeant over them.
He didn't see combat duty over his 39 months in service but supported those who did.
The atomic bomb was dropped on Japan while he was there.
Man on a mission
Laura had written him often, telling him about her days and what was going on back home.
Bob had one fear as he opened letters from Laura.
"I didn't want to get a Dear John letter," he said.
When he got home he had one mission.
"We both kind of agreed this was it," Laura said of his proposal.
He got back in February 1946, and the two married in April.
He took the skills he learned in the military to Southern Railway, which at that time used old steam engines. He retired after 43 years.
Laura worked in the offices of a couple of churches as they moved around for Bob's job. When they moved to Greensboro they joined First Lutheran. Laura spent 21 years as an administrative assistant in the chemical division of Burlington Industries.
They never had children of their own, but their family reaches far and wide. Photos of children from extended biological and "by love" families that include great-nieces and nephews, "church babies" -- some now grown -- and neighborhood children dot the walls and are tucked in nooks and crannies in their apartment at Friends Homes West.
Bob can point out the kids who tied him up when they played cops and robbers in their old neighborhood. And the little one whose "parents" always seemed to send him for Ritz crackers.
"He said, 'They said I can have three,'" Laura said, mimicking the little boy, who was a favorite in their household. "They had told him no such thing."
But they loved the little ones, who continue to visit them to this day.
In their 70s, in the early days of their retirement, they decided to travel to places they always wanted to go, like Switzerland and Jerusalem. They were able to cross the desert from Israel to Egypt.
All these years later and they continue to complete each other's thoughts and sentences, gaze lovingly at each other -- and sometimes in a teasing way, she plays Lucy to his Ricky when he's hamming it up and she reminds him he's hamming it up.
"I had no idea it would last that long," Laura said, a twinkle in her eye.
"Well, " Bob said, endearingly, "we're still here."
"Yes," Laura said.
336-373-7049
@nmclaughlinNR
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