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A LOVE STORY FOR THE AGES
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A LOVE STORY FOR THE AGES By Hannah Stiff
Valentine’s Day has come and gone. As has the ringing in of a new decade. Another Thanksgiving and Christmas season is in the rearview mirror. Though those holidays are often commercialized to the point of consumer debt, Dick and Lilly Lund know that it’s not one flashy Valentine’s gesture or expensive Christmas present that keep a marriage going strong.
Lilly should know. She and Dick have been married for many holidays – 63 years’ worth of Christmases and Valentine’s Days, to be precise. They still hold hands, often. They add to (and finish) each other’s stories. They tear up when the other tells a difficult story from a difficult season of life. The pair met in Omaha, Neb., where Lilly was living with her sister, helping raise her three children. Dick was an Air Force man, stationed at nearby Offutt Airforce Base. It was 1955. At church one Sunday, Lilly turned to her sister and told her they should invite one of the airmen over for supper. Dick got the invitation. While he was thrilled about a homecooked meal, he had to earn it. Lilly kept him busy putting screens on the windows so she could open them for a summer breeze and entertaining her sister’s three children. After that Sunday, Dick and Lilly decided they should hang out some more.
“He took me and the kids to the
park,” Lilly recalls. “It worked out really well. We were both farm kids. Dick grew up in Wyoming and I grew up in South Dakota. We had a lot in common.”
After 10 months of hanging out, Dick decided to upgrade the relationship to an engagement. Three months later, the pair married. Dick and Lilly soon moved to Laramie, Wyo., where Dick earned his graduate degree in economics and statistics. The couple also began to grow their well-balanced family.
Seven years after they moved to Wyoming, Dick was admitted to a doctoral program to study economics and statistics in Ames, Iowa. The young family packed up and moved again, ready for a new adventure.
While Dick was busy with school, Lilly found herself running an impromptu daycare.
The Lunds had a two-car garage where the littlest kids could safely ride their tricycles around in circles while the older children enjoyed the large yard. After three busy years, Dick and Lilly packed up the kids and took off for their biggest adventure yet – moving out of the country to Mexico.
Through a grant from Iowa State University, Dick was offered a job near Mexico City, helping establish a graduate program in statistics and economics at a local university. Watching their four young children learn Spanish was a wonderful adventure indeed, Dick and Lilly agree. Lilly learned a bit of Spanish, too, and was often called upon by friends from other countries to visit the market and translate for them. It was in Mexico that Dick learned of a job offer in Bozeman. Dick was flown from Mexico to Montana for an interview with the math department at Montana State University. One view of the Bridger Mountains after a rainstorm and Dick was sold. He accepted the job and put an offer in on a house in the same short trip. The couple settled
into their Montana life quickly and the Lund children enjoyed attending Bozeman schools. Three of the four Lund children attended MSU, where Dick continued his work as a statistician for various departments for decades.
Lilly kept busy through the years with the children and volunteering at church in the office and baking for different functions. Dick served as a Boy Scout leader for nearly 40 years. Together, the couple also supports Reach, Inc., the Bozeman nonprofit that empowers adults with disabilities.
Though their children are grown and gone with their own children, Dick and Lilly remain in the first
home they bought in Bozeman on North 15th Ave., where they’ve been for the last 50 years. These days, Dick keeps busy writing a book about the history of statistics at MSU. Both he and Lilly enjoy dining at the Bozeman Senior Center several times a week.
As the seasons come and go, Dick and Lilly continue their love story. Though there’s no “secret recipe” to a long, happy marriage, both have a few bits of advice to share.
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