When my future grandparents took the train from Bainbridge to Greencastle on June 1, 1921, they had to be two very scared 18-year-olds.

They were slipping off to get married against the wishes of family members who had declared, "It would never last."

It lasted all right -- for 75 years.

I think of my grandparents often, certainly on Valentine's Day.

Forest Young and Irene Ford were born only a month apart in 1903. He was a lanky kid, about 6 feet tall. A handsome guy, a little on the shy side. She was tall too, about 5-8. Wavy hair. A smile he couldn't resist.

When Irene was 2 her mother died. Her father couldn't raise her alone, so she was sent to live with her grandparents.

Neither Forest nor Irene went to school beyond the eighth grade. Life was hard. There was always work to do at home.

In the spring of 1921 Forest summoned every ounce of his courage, swallowed hard and asked Irene's grandparents for permission to marry her.

They flatly refused. No discussion. It was her grandfather who shouted the infamous, "It would never last!"

On the morning of June 1 they met Forest's married sister and her husband and boarded the train for Greencastle. The conspirators went first to the marriage license office at the courthouse, then to the parlor of a local minister's home where Forest and Irene were wed.

On the trip back to Bainbridge -- by horse and buggy -- the young couple realized they hadn't planned much beyond "I do." They couldn't go to Irene's grandparents house, and Forest's parents weren't likely to appreciate the fact that they had eloped.

The first few months of their three-quarters-of-a-century marriage were spent at the home of Forest's sister.

Things got better, eventually. They worked. They found a place to rent. On summer Saturday nights they joined others to watch silent movies shown on what amounted to a bed sheet hung in downtown Bainbridge.

In 1927 their only child -- my mother -- was born.

Like millions of other families they were hit hard by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Forest worked at a lumberyard, drove a truck, did whatever he could to support his family.

In the 1940s he began the occupation he would continue for more than 20 years. Bainbridge was looking for a town marshal. Forest's physical fitness was tempered by his even disposition and sense of fairness. The town board offered him the job.

While Forest kept the peace, Irene kept their home. Occasionally the Bon Ton would call when a cook -- a very good cook who never followed a written recipe -- was needed.

My mother, Betty, graduated from Bainbridge High School in 1945, two years after my father, Jules, who was overseas with the U.S. Marine Corps.

Over the years Forest's professional reputation earned him town marshal offers, first at Ladoga, then on to Jamestown and Thorntown in Boone County. In those communities too local restaurants learned to count on Irene.

Forest handled domestic disputes, corralled the occasional drunk, checked merchants' doors late at night. There were the more serious incidents too. Sometimes he would join Indiana State Police troopers in high-speed chases of armed suspects. There was the time when, summoned to an accident scene, he saved the life of a teen-age boy by pulling him from beneath his burning car.

Through it all, Irene kept a scrapbook. A thick scrapbook.

In the late 1960s Forest retired. He and Irene moved a mobile home onto the rear of the Washington Township site where my parents had built a house a few years earlier. Forest worked in his wood shop, building multi-tiered purple martin houses. Irene tended a garden, raised flowers and baked. They enjoyed "Gunsmoke" and Lawrence Welk. They watched their three grandchildren have their eight great-grandchildren.

In 1994 my father's advancing Alzheimer's Disease forced his admission to an assisted living facility in Greencastle. That same year, despite the daily help of my mother, Forest and Irene decided they could no longer maintain a home on their own. They moved into the same facility, just four miles away, sharing a room decorated with the memories of a lifetime together.

They celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary there on June 1, 1996. Willard Scott mentioned the occasion on "The Today Show."

Just over five months later my grandmother died at 93. Seated near her casket in his wheelchair, a tear winding its way slowly down his cheek, my grandfather squeezed my hand and said softly, "I've lost my best friend."

Eventually, my grandfather resumed his regular routine at the nursing home, caring for the facility's pet rabbit and guiding his wheelchair up and down each corridor daily. He checked on the well being of others and stopped to chat at the nurses' station. It seemed to me very much like how he had cared for an entire town so many years earlier.

He died in March 2000, just 18 days before his 97th birthday.

My grandparents shared a quiet, deep common sense that no educational degree can offer. I learned much from them. I continue to do so. Born months before the Wright brothers made their first flight, they saw Lindbergh conquer the Atlantic and man set foot on the moon. They endured two world wars, Korea and Vietnam. Seventeen presidents occupied the White House during their lifetimes.

Through it all, their valentine endured.

Not bad for a marriage destined never to last.