First kiss was never forgotten

Is it ever too late for love and romance? Is it ever too late to tell a love story all over again?

Not if it’s about Romeo and Juliet. Or Cyrano and Roxanne.

So why not Ann Harding and her long faithful Jonathan Garvis?

Their story came to mind a few days ago when her daughter, Dot, and Dot’s husband, Jim Gandy, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary — which is a pretty good love story itself.

But this is an anniversary, too.

Exactly 10 years ago, 91-year-old Jonathan Garvis declared it’s never too late for love, flew from Akron, Ohio, to Charlotte, rented a car (he’d need itto wine and dine his lady love, he said) and headed straight to Salisbury, where he greeted 84-year-old Ann Harding with — what else?

A kiss, of course.

And she didn’t demand, “What did you do that for?” the way she had when she was 16.

This time she blushed.

Nurses at Meridian Nursing Home wondered if she had a fever.

“No fever!” she said. “I’m warm because I’m excited.”

The first man who ever kissed her was showing up decades later after searching her out through two states and flooding her with phone calls and volumes of love letters.

“I can’t believe it!” he announced, pinching himself.

“I’m worth it, though,” she says, but he doesn’t hear. She repeats it. Louder. And he hears. You see it in his eyes, his voice, the arm that moves closer on her wheelchair.

They met when she was 10. Played together. But he was older and went away to college. And then one day she was sitting alone, and he came up behind her and kissed her.

And she popped that question: Why did he do that?

“Because I wanted to,” he said. “I like you!”

Then he popped his own question.

“How about you and me getting married? Let’s elope.”

She said yes. He’d knock on the window, and she’d pass her suitcase through.

It went as planned.

He came, knocked, and she opened the window.

But she had no suitcase.

“I’m afraid,” she said.

“You promised,” he said.

“I’ve changed my mind,” she said.

He left. And married another girl. She married another man. And she didn’t see him again until he came to her father’s funeral. By then she was a grandmother.

She heard from him again when her husband died — and after his wife died, 68 years after that failed elopement.

He had traced her to Salisbury, though it wasn’t easy.

By then she’d suffered a stroke and was paralyzed, but she had learned to walk with a cane and how to take care of herself — and went home.

But help was hard to keep.

So she came here to Meridian to be near Dot, and John found her — and had to see her.

“You don’t want to see me,” she said.

“You’re still Ann, aren’t you?” he asked.

Of course, so he came.

The only change he saw, he said, was her white hair — and he thought it was beautiful.

She smiled, and they talked and talked. They had so much to catch up on, so many years to remember. So many things to share.

And he had to tell her that 68 years later, he still hadn’t forgotten the girl he kissed when she was 16.

Contact Rose Post at 704-797-4251or rpost@salisburypost.com .