When Norman and Helen Weimer exchanged their wedding vows, people said they’d never make it because they were too young. She was 18. He was 20. Seventy-four years later, the Weimers sit in their living room in their High Country Lodge suite in Black Diamond chatting and laughing at old memories. When they don’t have visitors, Helen watches sports - although she’s not a fan - and Norman will sit through Helen’s favourite soap operas, offering no complaints. There’s just one television in their suite so Norman, 94, and Helen, 92, compromise. “I’m watching a lot of hockey and I could care less about hockey,” Helen said. “You adapt. You give and take.” According to Norman, a successful marriage is achieved by showing your spouse you love her, letting her look after the finances and never trying to win an argument. “If we had an argument we always tried to settle it before we went to bed,” he said. “Also, she looked after the money and all the bills. If I ever went to the bank they’d be like, ‘Who are you?’” The couple met when Helen, then 15, was walking home from a dance with a friend in Calgary and Norman pulled up in his 1929 Plymouth and offered the girls a ride home. “I got in the front seat and Grace got in the back,” Helen recalls. “He never said a word. Usually kids that age are mouthy. I noticed him because he was quiet.” Neither Norman nor Helen is sure when they started dating officially. “I imagine he asked for a date,” said Helen, glancing Norman’s way. “I guess it wasn’t a red letter day for him.” Norman doesn’t respond to Helen’s comment except to reminisce. “We would go to the movies,” he said. “We would go on wiener roasts out by Midnapore.” Norman drove Helen to Western Canada High School, where she attended, on his way to delivering bread to the Perkins grocery store, where Helen’s sister worked. “I didn’t tell my sister he was driving me to school,” Helen said. “I thought I shouldn’t be going with anybody steady at 15.” Norman had Wednesday afternoons off so Helen would skip school to spend time with him. “She was a nice girl and I just loved her,” Norman said. “It happened pretty quickly.” Then Norman joined the navy to do his part in the Second World War. He was to be stationed in Halifax where his brother was serving. Helen recalls the agony of his departure. “I can remember your grandpa and grandma being there and we were clinging to each other at the train station,” Helen told him. Norman wrote Helen letters and visited her when he could. The couple decided to take it to the next level and Norman went AWOL so they could marry in Calgary. The date was June 15, 1944. Their parents had to sign their permission because the couple was under the age of 21. “I thought the only way to be together is you had to be married,” Helen said. “Otherwise, we never would have been married that young.” After spending their honeymoon in Banff, the couple went to Halifax where Norman returned to the navy and Helen worked for TransCanada Airline. They saw each other about every two weeks. When the war ended, they returned to Calgary and got an apartment. Helen got a job with the Insurance Bureau of Canada and Norman worked as a truck driver for Imperial Oil for about a decade before they got a green card to work in California to make more money. Their only child, Darlene, was born shortly after and the family returned to Calgary for family vacations regularly. In the 1980s, Darlene moved to Millarville for a slower pace and, two years ago, convinced her parents to settle in the Foothills. The couple chose the High Country Lodge. For Helen it was like returning home. Her family had moved to Black Diamond when she was three years old before moving to Calgary nine years later so she could continue school. Helen recalls attending Black Diamond School when Ian McLaren was principal. “There were only four teachers and they each taught two grades,” she said. “I got the strap in the first grade for talking. That’s all it took.” Helen’s father moved buildings for a living and Helen had uncles who worked in the oilfields. Helen enjoyed rural life. Among the highlights was when her family rented a horse one summer. “I used to have to get an apple box so I could get up on the horse and get the halter on and I would ride it downtown and back again,” she said. “The blacksmith said, ‘If you don’t stop riding that horse so much I’m going to report you to the magistrate,’ which at that age scared me to death.” Helen found a new four-legged companion when one of the family’s dogs brought a piglet home. “It thought it was a dog,” she said. “I can remember it would try to sit like the dogs and one leg would stick way out. I loved that pig. It was smarter than the dogs by the way it minded. “It followed me everywhere I went.” Eighty years later, Helen is back where she can bring those memories to life. “If someone would have said I would be back in Black Diamond where I started out I wouldn’t have believed it,” she said. “Here I am and I’m happy. It’s home.”
