Clarence “Bill” Raper, 91, of Bend, and his wife, Jeanice, 87, sit side by side at the new table in their just-remodeled Bend kitchen.

The two are recalling the night they met.

That was about 73 years ago, at the Terrebonne Grange — the place to go back in those days, they say. Jeanice — then Jeanice Pursel, 14 — had gone to the dance with someone else.

“But I danced with her all night long,” Bill says.

The following week, they went on their first proper date. Just the two of them — and several of Bill’s best friends.

“He and four of his buddies were in the car,” Jeanice remembers.

“Three of my buddies and myself,” corrects Bill. “Four guys and one gal went to the movies.”

“We never went anyplace without those fellas,” she says, chuckling. “Bill’s buddies. They didn’t want him to have a date, I guess.”

If that was his friends’ mission, they failed: Earlier this month, the longtime Bend couple celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary.

Growing up

Jeanice’s father moved to Oregon in 1920. He settled in Union for a while, then moved to Baker City, where Jeanice was born. In 1925, when she was 2, she moved with her family to Bend. Her father, Sam Pursel, worked for Cashman Clothing Store in Bend.

Bill was born in a Shevlin-Hixon logging camp near Benham Falls and Lava Butte.

“You’ve been down in the Old Mill District. Have you seen those old railroad cars?” Bill asks. “That’s where I went to school. One teacher for all eight grades.” Classmates included Les Schwab of Les Schwab Tires fame.

Bill slept through most of first grade, he says, but he remembers camp life very well. During one boxing bout in the 1920s, everyone gathered together to listen. “There was only one guy in camp who had a radio. So he put his radio outside and turned it up as loud as he could.”

“Gene Tunney won,” he adds, rapping on the kitchen table.

When his family came into town, Bend was dirt roads and wooden sidewalks.

When Bill was 10 years old, his family moved to Bend, where his father ran a tavern on Bond Street called The Ponderosa.

That’s where all the taverns were, he says. “It was loggers and sheepherders. They came into town to drink and fight.”

Both of them attended Reid School, now home to the Des chutes Historical Museum, and graduated from Bend High.

After Bill and Jeanice met, they dated for three years. They were married on Sept. 2, 1939, about four months shy of Jeanice’s 18th birthday, at a Presbyterian Church on Newport Avenue, now the home of Jinsei Spa.

To give you some perspective on how long the two have been together, “The Wizard of Oz” premiered a couple of weeks prior to their wedding. The day before they were married, Nazi Germany invaded Poland in the early stages of World War II, during which Bill served stateside in the Air Force.

For their honeymoon, the couple went to Diamond Lake for the first night, then drove to San Francisco in Bill’s 1936 Plymouth.

“We actually went to the World’s Fair,” he says.

“In San Francisco,” she adds. “You took a ferry to go over to the island.”

After their honeymoon, they came back to Bend, where Bill worked for a beer distributor and they rented a small house that sat back on the alley on Congress Street.

“$15 a month,” says Bill, laughing.

“It was a one-bedroom,” says Jeanice. “It had no doors on the bedroom” — she hung curtains for privacy — “and a little tiny bathroom that you had to back in and back out of. We finally got the landlord to put a little washbowl in there.”

In 1940, Gary, their first son, was born on Hospital Hill; now the site is home to the Phoenix Inn. When Gary was 4 months old, they moved onto Delaware Street, renting an apartment for $16 a month.

“We wanted a house to live in, not just an apartment,” recalls Jeanice. Bill was working at Erickson’s Grocery, and employer P.A. Erickson paid for the purchase of the Rapers’ first home in 1941.

The house was right next door to the home where they still live on Marshall Street.

Today, it’s a stone’s throw from Marshall High and the congestion of Third Street. Back then, the spot was rural.

“No streetlights, no paved streets, no nothing. We were out in the country. Now look at it,” Jeanice says. They share a laugh at the thought.

The house cost $1,400; the payments were $20 a month.

“In those days, $20 a month would feed you for a full month,” says Bill.

“And we had this lot,” adds Jeanice. “It had two lots. I had a big garden here on this lot, beautiful berries, strawberries and raspberries.”

In 1970, they built their current home where the garden had been. For a while, they rented out the first home and eventually sold it.

Love and loss

A couple doesn’t reach their 70th anniversary without experiencing loss, and the Rapers are no exception. They had two sons, Robbie, who died in 1947 at age 5, and Gary, who died in 1971 at age 31.

They’re reluctant to go into detail about this area of their lives, and daughter-in-law Susie Moore says that may be because they’re so focused on looking ahead and remaining positive. Moore lives in Whitefish, Mont. Since Gary’s death, she has remained close to Bill and Jeanice, who have been like parents to her.

“I do consider them my parents,” Moore says. “In fact, people get rather confused because I always say, ‘I’m going to Bend to visit my parents,’ and then somehow it comes up that my parents have been gone for a long time and … then I try to explain. But we just don’t focus on the hardships.”

Before he died, Gary and Susie Moore had three children: Ron, Jeff and Kristin.

“We’ve got seven great-grandkids,” Bill says proudly. They are Corey Anne Russell, David Raper, Carly Anne Raper, Kelsey Koch, and Michael, Tucker and Maggie Voisin.

“They all live in Whitefish,” says Jeanice.

“We have been to the graduation of every one of our grandkids,” says Bill. “Just this (year), we flew up for the graduation of our great-granddaughter” Kelsey Koch. They made the trip in a friend’s private plane.

A partner in Bend Oil Co., Bill didn’t retire until age 85.

“I owned part of the business; I wasn’t just working,” he explains, laughing heartily. “If you own part of a business, you don’t drop it like when you turn 65 and you’re working for somebody.”

Hunting was a beloved pastime. “We were heavy into pheasants,” Bill says.

“Did a lot of duck hunting, too,” Jeanice adds.

They also frequented the old Skyliners’ ski area west of Bend. Fishing was another hobby.

“We spent all our summers at Sparks Lake and Paulina Lake and East Lake. Started out in a little lean-to tent; we had lots of fun,” Jeanice says.

A good catch

Looking through a batch of old photos, Bill dotes on his wife’s beauty.

“You can see why I didn’t let her get away,” he says.

“We were pretty good-lookin’ kids,” she agrees. “I was a pretty good-lookin’ girl when I was young. And he was pretty good-lookin’.”

Over the years, the two took frequent trips to Portland and journeyed to Europe and Mexico City. They drove their motor home to the end of Baja California.

Jeanice had hip surgery two years ago and had to relearn how to walk. She also has macular degeneration and hasn’t driven in about 12 years.

“It hasn’t all been easy, the last few years,” she says.

However, their days of fun are hardly behind them: Soon after the interview, Bill was heading off on a two-day fishing excursion on the John Day River.

“It’s a paid float trip. We’ll float the river all day long,” he says. “Catch and release.”

The two also catch country music concerts when they can. For 14 consecutive years, they went to the Oregon Jamboree in Sweet Home.

They’ve missed the last three years, Jeanice says. “We made a lot of nice friends over there.”

However, they still enjoy trips in their motor home and attend the annual Wheeler County Bluegrass Festival in Fossil.

“See, I’m 91,” Bill explains. “You put that Tahoe behind the motor home, and it’s over 50 feet long. We took it to Fossil because there’s not much traffic, but to go over the mountains ain’t no picnic.

“I have to be careful — well, I have to be careful drivin’ around town — because if I got into some kind of an accident, they’d say, ‘That’s the end of your driving.’”

“We’d be up the crick without a paddle there, for sure,” adds Jeanice.

Both of them laugh when they’re asked what they attribute their long marriage to.

“Lots of fishing,” Jeanice says.

“I don’t know,” Bill says, laughing.

“You just let Bill do what he wants to do,” Jeanice says.

“She’s easy to get along with,” he says. “That’s the best part of it.”

“Oh boy,” she says. “He is too, or (was) until he retired.”

Bill’s advice to younger couples: “You just got to get along. If you don’t get along, you’d better get away.”

Adds Jeanice, “Kids nowadays think you get married just to be married, and then if you don’t get along, then you just go left. We’ve been married that many years, but we still saw them all through. We’ve lost kids, and we’ve lost folks, we’ve lost everybody.”

Most afternoons around 4, you can find them in their backyard, next to the motor home, where they enjoy drinking toddies.

The only arguments they have now, Bill says, occur when he doesn’t wear his hearing aids.

“‘Put your hearing aids in,’” he says. “I leave them out on purpose.

“She can’t see,” he says.

“And he can’t hear,” she finishes. “It’s the deaf leading the blind around here.”

The recent remodel of their kitchen was Bill’s wedding anniversary present to his wife. It includes all new stainless steel appliances and a large wooden kitchen table.

“He figured after 70 years I deserved it, I guess,” Jeanice says.