WILMA & CARL

The Heinrichs 97 and 102 years old, respectively still embrace each day together. Sure, Carl will say things such as, “She’s been around this long. I might as well keep her!” But the words are spoken through a grin and evoke one from Wilma. Carl can’t hear as well as he would like, and he uses a walker to get around, but he moves surprisingly swiftly up and down the long corridor between his apartment and the retirement community’s dining and recreation rooms; his mind and spirit are fit. A lush garden, flowers in various stages of bloom, is visible through the apartment’s sliding back door; Wilma maintains it herself. “She’s got a green thumb,” says Daisy Thomas, the Heinrichs’ nursing assistant.

When Carl met Wilma …

Both worked for the bakery conglomerate Taggart in Missouri. In 1939 a group of young staffers, Carl and Wilma among them, was transferred to Dallas. One day, 25-year-old Wilma, a secretary to the chairman of the board, gazed, alongside a co-worker, out the window. When a sharply dressed Carl strode by, Wilma joked, “There goes God’s gift to women.” One of the bosses overheard and asked Wilma, “What did you say?” Wilma repeated herself, and word got back to Carl that she might be interested. He asked her to a party on a Friday but canceled at the last minute. He asked her out again. Wilma accepted and canceled a day before the date. To even the score, no doubt. Two weeks later, they went out to dinner at a nice place. They married in ’41.

Marriage and family

Wilma gave birth just days before Carl shipped off to World War II. The baby, Mike, was premature, weighed just over four pounds. About having to leave them, Carl only says, “It didn’t feel good.” Wilma says she never doubted Carl would come home. She adds that Mike grew healthy and strong. “He’s 6’2 and 250 pounds now,” she says with a laugh.

Carl is an incredibly patient man, his wife says. “He taught me how to drive a car. When my own father tried to teach my mother how to drive, they were back in five minutes. He couldn’t handle it." Carl always has been relaxed. That’s why he was good at golf, too. “I have always been calm,” Carl agrees. “I am an optimist. Optimism and exercise is the key to a long, healthy life,” he says. His family, all farmers, was like Carl in that way. “They were good to me,” says Wilma, whose own father was killed when she was just a girl.

In 72 years of marriage, they say, they never fought. “We always gave each other space,” Wilma says. “We did what we wanted to do. Sometimes together. Sometimes with our own friends. In retirement we traveled together a lot — Hawaii, Alaska, New Mexico, the Caribbean — and that helped.” A cruise-ship photo of the two, middle-aged and radiant, hangs over the television.

‘Open the gates’

Wilma’s hair is angelic white and styled neatly atop her head. “When I was young my mother worried so much about my hair,” she says. “Now I get more compliments on it!” Three afternoons a week, they play Bingo together. Daisy Thomas helps Carl, because he has a hard time hearing the caller. Wilma is alert enough to keep track of her own and her neighbors’ Bingo cards. She wins. “Bingo!” she pro-

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“No, I am not afraid to die,” Carl says with a big grin. “I believe there is a hereafter. I am ready to go. Open the gates,” he says and raises his hands to the heavens. Next to him, Wilma smiles and nods her agreement.