Reflections on Marriage--on 79th Anniversary

DOWNEY —  When Gilbert met Annetta, William Howard Taft had just beaten William Jennings Bryan in the presidential election in 1909.

“I courted her for three years before I married her,” said Gilbert Karnopp, 98. Two weeks before the Downey couple’s big bash of a 79th wedding anniversary celebration on July 21, Annetta Karnopp, 98, slipped into a coma. Friends and family still arrived at her nursing home, where residents had planned for weeks to celebrate the couple with cake, ice cream and a barbershop quartet.

“She made every (anniversary party) before that. But she’s in pretty bad shape now,” Karnopp said.

“They wanted to give her a transfusion and I said no, that would prolong it. I’m taking it real good.” He paused. “When she passes away, I don’t know what I’ll do. But you have to be sensible when you’re married.”

The couple attribute their longevity--both in life and as partners--to eating lots of red meat and listening to each other, Karnopp said.

“The marriage wouldn’t have lasted this long if we were fighting. It’s give and take. We never argued. She never complained. She always smiled and was very good-natured. I might be bragging a little, but I’m good-natured too.”

Gilbert remembers fondly courting Annetta, walking or riding a horse and buggy to country dances and picture shows in Manitowoc, Wis. They talked in the parlor by candlelight or kerosene lamp because there was no electricity. “Everybody behaved themselves then. There was no sex, not like there is nowadays!” said Karnopp, who left high school to pursue a barber’s trade.

Sitting on the porch one night in 1913, Gilbert asked Annetta to marry him. “I was shocked when she said yes. I still remember that! She was a beautiful girl,” he said. They were 20 and she was his first girlfriend. “I don’t know if I was her first boyfriend,” he said. “I imagine I was. I never asked.”

At first, they moved around a lot, to accommodate Karnopp’s career as a barber and later his work as a newspaperman. It still bothers Karnopp that the military turned him down for service in World War I. “They gave me a 4-F, said I wasn’t strong enough.”

In 1923, they moved to Los Angeles, where Karnopp started the South East News in Downey. He continues to live there, in the house the couple bought 40 years ago. Gilbert Karnopp built the newspaper into a 50-page weekly, and Annetta Karnopp kept the books. They sold out in 1958 and “never worked a day since,” Karnopp said. They have one child, Dorothy, 71, who still lives with her father.

In their retirement, “my wife and I did a lot of going to Las Vegas. A lot of it. And we went to Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. I worked on the garage. I got the neatest garage anyone ever had. And I built (Annetta) four benches for her cactus. That was her hobby. She loved those cactus. Now there’s no cactus left.”

Six years ago, Annetta Karnopp entered a nursing home. “I used to visit her every day,” Gilbert said. “But then I got older, I slowed up too.”

Although the world changed drastically, the Karnopps remained “pretty much the same our whole lives,” Karnopp said. “We had the same habits and we stuck to them. We ate lots of eggs, steak, rolls, butter. Never looked once at my cholesterol. I haven’t got any wrinkles and I’ve still got 18 teeth left,” he said.

The most significant change Karnopp sees for himself in the coming years: “I’ve been a Republican all my life,” he said. “But this year, I’m going Democrat.”

Gahr High School students Marisela Muniz, Becky Pagan, Michelle Southerd, Liane Su and Patrick Vasquez were among 300 high school students nationwide selected to serve as ambassadors to Australia from July 11-31. The Cerritos students are part of the People to People Student Ambassador Friendship Caravan program, established in 1956 to expose Americans to other cultures.

Terrel J. Reyes of Long Beach won an appointment to the Air Force Academy and will join the Class of 1996 in Colorado Springs in the fall. Reyes, a 1992 graduate of Lakewood High School, is one of the nation’s fastest high school mile runners. He ranked in the top 1% of his class and received awards for outstanding achievement in chemistry, math, science, algebra and geometry.

The Whittier Choralaires barbershop quartet took first place in the Southern California Eastern Division competition, winning a chance to compete in Phoenix in October for the Far Western championships of the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America. The Choralaires, under the direction of Rick Johnson and Phil Ordaz, won their first local Eastern Division in six years.

Paramount High School senior Manny Garcia was elected to one of the highest state positions of the Columbian Squires, a Catholic organization that helps boys develop leadership through church, civic, social and athletic activities. Manny was installed as state bursar during the recent California State Squires Convention in San Luis Opisbo. He is the son of Manuel and Maria Garcia of Paramount.