From Italy to Green Bay, New Franken couple celebrate 70 years

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Merlin and Fatima Baenen's 70-year marriage has been filled with ups and downs, wine and waves and a lot of love.

NEW FRANKEN - She was a seasick new bride when she arrived in America on a ship from her home country of Italy.

He had 10 cents in his pocket when the train dropped them off at the station in Green Bay.

A lifetime later, Merlin and Fatima Baenen didn’t just make it, they’ve made it all the way to a remarkable milestone in their love story. On Thursday, they will celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary. Their years together since 1954, when Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House, "Lassie" was on TV and Max McGee was on the field for the Green Bay Packers, have gone by almost in a blink.

“I woke up one morning and I was married for 70 years,” Fatima said. “I didn’t even realize that. It went fast.”

U.S. Census Bureau statistics will tell you that only one-tenth of 1% of marriages last 70 years or more. The Baenens will tell you the secret is ... well, they have to think about that one for a minute.

“Just give in a little bit, I suppose,” Merlin said. “Don’t claim you’re always right.”

“Yes, compromise — mostly my way,” Fatima said, proving a sense of humor doesn’t hurt, either.

She just turned 89 last week. He’ll be 94 in November.

They still live in the New Franken home he built for them on the family farm in 1961. He makes their bed every morning and does the dishes. She cooks and irons his clothes (his first Christmas gift to her was an ironing board). He mows the sprawling lawn, all five hours’ worth. She tends to the colorful flower beds.

They have four children, one of whom is deceased, 12 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

By the time you’re reading this, they’ll already have celebrated their 70th twice. First, a potluck with friends in Club ItaloAmericano, a local social group for people interested in Italian culture, outside Green Bay Yachting Club, where they’re longtime members. Then, over the weekend, a gathering with family and friends at The Woods hosted by their children.

How did they meet? That’s a story.

He charmed her family, but it was his legs that caught her eye Fatima was working in a bar/restaurant in Italy while Merlin was a GI stationed there. He would stop in weekly. When her sister began dating an American GI, Fatima was recruited to go along as their chaperone. Merlin often went with to keep her company.

“A tag-along,” he said.

Her sister broke up with that young man when he went to Austria, but Merlin and Fatima remained friends.

They never really dated, because Fatima said they were never left alone. He sent a photo of her home to his parents in Wisconsin and told them she was a friend. When Army camp was over, he would often take the bus to come visit Fatima and her family. He spoke Italian fluently and charmed her mother.

“He was good to my family. He was a gentleman. Everybody loved him more than they loved me. He was it. He still is,” Fatima said.

But it might have been his good-looking legs that sealed the deal. She remembers the first time she got a look at them when they went to the beach.

“That really got me,” she said, laughing. “That was it.”

A year and a half later, they were engaged.

“So this guy got stuck with me for 70 years,” Fatima said. “That’s the way we met.”

He had to come back to the United States to be discharged, so in July 1954 he left for a week but vowed to come back for her. A month later, on Aug. 22, 1954, they were married in Genoa, a couple hundred miles north of her hometown.

It was every girl’s dream to get married in a white dress, but Fatima’s family was poor. Then one day a few weeks before the their wedding, a beautiful package arrived from the United States. Inside was her wedding dress, a gift from Merlin’s parents.

She has never forgotten how loving and welcoming his whole family has been to that young woman who didn’t speak English and had to learn an entirely new way of life in Wisconsin. The dress is still in their closet.

From Italy to New York to Green Bay and 'flat broke' On Dec. 29, 1954, they departed Genoa on a new oceanliner called the SS Cristoforo Colombo and arrived in New York seven days later.

“The first thing you see with the ship is this gorgeous Statue of Liberty,” Fatima said. “It happened to be a ship with a lot of immigrants. People just cried.”

She had been seasick for days, so once on land, they found a cheap hotel to rest and recover. She remembers Merlin waking her up. He had brought something for her to eat: pizza and hot cocoa.

“After three days of not eating, my stomach went ...” she said, making the sound effect of a stomach perhaps not quite ready for that.

Their short time in the city included a visit to the Empire State Building observatory, where they made two souvenir records from the coin recording machines popular at the time — one in Italian they sent back to her family and another in English they still have.

They caught the train to Green Bay the next morning. When they arrived at the station, Merlin told Fatima to wait for his mother to come pick them up. He had 10 cents left in his pocket and he was going to get a beer.

“Now we are flat broke,” he said when he returned. “We’ve got nothing.”

Fatima wasn’t worried.

“When I got married to him, I knew I was never going to starve, because he was a farmer at that time, so we would always have food,” she said.

A lifetime of hard work, a helping hand from family and the Great Loop They started their lives with little, just the love and help of those around him. They lived with family. Merlin’s sisters found Fatima a job at Algoma Hammock Company in De Pere. The manager put her to work in shipping, where she could copy addresses onto boxes for delivery without having to know much English.

During her lunch hour, some of the other women at the plant and a couple of truck drivers taught her how to play sheepshead, a card game that’s synonymous with Wisconsin culture. Fatima was good at it.

Merlin’s brother-in-law was a manager at U.S. Paper Mills Corp. in De Pere and helped him get a job working nights. After his shift from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., he went to school at 9 a.m. to learn how to become an electrician. His last paycheck from the mill was $94 and his first when he started his electrical apprenticeship was $28, a significant pay cut back in the days when bread was 75 cents a loaf and a gallon of ice cream was $1.

The career move served him well. He opened his own business as an electrical contractor. Fatima went to school to learn English and became an American citizen after the birth of their second child. When their family was grown, she went to school to become a beautician, working first at her sister-in-law’s salon and then becoming an owner herself. (She still has the nicest manicured nails in the room.)

They sold their boat a few years ago, but together they racked up thousands of miles on the water, traveling as far as the Bahamas. They completed the Great Loop, a year-long voyage that takes boaters from the Great Lakes to Key West and back up through the Canadian Heritage Canals — 6,000 miles in all.

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He loves to be in the vineyard any day; she plays bocce on Sundays One of the things that has made their marriage work is not so much what they have in common but what they don’t. They’re a couple with their own interests.

“He likes to do what he likes to do. I don’t get involved. He doesn’t get involved,” Fatima said. “But we do things together.”

Since 1989, Merlin has been heavily involved in the restoration and preservation of the Grassy Island Lighthouses at Green Bay Yachting Club, spending endless hours on the project. Fatima jokes she was a widow during some of those years, because he was always working there.

These days, you’re most likely to find him in the vineyard behind their house. Sometimes he disappears in the morning and Fatima doesn’t see him again until it’s time for supper. With some help, he makes 150 gallons of wine each season.

Fatima, who was known as “The Spaghetti Lady” for years at Green Bay Yachting Club, likes to play cards and bocce on Sundays and get together with her Red Hat Society friends.

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“I like my freedom, because he doesn’t like what I like. I like to play cards. For him, it’s a waste of time. He’s got to go to work,” Fatima said.

They still find joy in one another. It makes him happy when he can look out from the sunroom and see her working with her flowers, something he knows she loves.

Fatima recalls one day she was watching the birds out the window when she saw Merlin out in the yard measuring. She poked her head out and asked what in the world he was doing.

“He looks at me and says, ‘I’m building you a deck.’ He’s building me a deck!” she said. “So that’s the kind of guy he is. He is good to me. He’s doing things good for me, even though he doesn’t send me flowers and stuff like that. I’m used to that, because I know he loves me in his own way.”

Seventy years into their marriage, they share a sweet exchange each day.

“He kisses me. I kiss him every night, every morning,” Fatima said, just in case one day it's their last. “At our age, you never know.”

Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com. Follow her on X @KendraMeinert.

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