Pennies for Us / Savings for 50th anniversary celebration to be spent elsewhere
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1 Comment [ View ]By SAM COOPER
Standard-Examiner staff
SOUTH WEBER -- Through good times and bad times, LaDean and Gary Fitzgerald saved their pennies.
It started when the couple was married in the Manti Temple in 1960. She was 16 years old and he was 18. At the time, they made a pact they would save the change for their 50th wedding anniversary. The idea was the money would be used to do something special.
The couple started putting them in a little bowl, LaDean said, and when that filled up they put them in a larger container, then finally a five-gallon water jug. Then that filled up, too.
"I don't know why ... it was just pennies, but five pennies made a nickel," she said. "We were thinking of taking a little cruise for ourselves."
The pennies kept adding up.
"Every time we'd have change, he'd put it in the bedroom and I'd take it in here and just dump it," she said. "They used to say a penny is a teardrop from heaven. If I see a penny, I always stoop down and save it."
Soon they had to get another large glass jug, which joined the other in the couple's living room.
The years flew by and soon they had children, who had their own children, and all were fascinated by the huge jars of change. The pennies were always a temptation to use to buy candy, said Greg Fitzgerald, their son, but somehow he resisted.
Once, LaDean and Gary and the grandkids poured the pennies out on the carpet and tried to count them all. But the kids got tired of counting and put them all back. "We'd get to talking and forget where we were at," she said. There were just too many.
For nearly 30 years, Gary Fitzgerald worked at Hill Air Force Base on the Minuteman missile systems before retiring in 1993.
The couple's dream of a cruise got closer and closer. One day last July, two years before their 50th anniversary, Gary's heart just stopped beating. He had suffered from an irregular heartbeat, and was buried in the Lindquist Cemetery in Layton, LaDean said.
Since his death, the pennies started to take on a new meaning.
"The kids just say, 'Why don't you just keep them?' but that's why we were saving them, for me and him," she said. "But he's gone."
They have become an emotional reminder, she said.
"It's OK if I don't see them all the time, like his office in there. Life is just shorter than you think it is. He was only 66. I'd just retired. I thought we'd have time together. It's just too short."
She said she's been trying to decide how to spend the money they'd so patiently saved. She's also thinking of letting a coin collector sift through the jugs, which shine coppery on top and fade to a dark tarnish near the bottom. Some of the dates are difficult to read on the old coins. "They're not worth as much as before," she said remorsefully.
Keeping with the pact, the money had to be spent on something the two were going to do as a couple, she decided.
"The only thing I can think of is, we're going to have to have headstones together," LaDean said. She'd already picked out her husband's headstone, but hadn't paid for it. It has a picture of a golf bag on one side and an image of the Manti temple on the other, she said. Gary Fitzgerald loved to golf.
The next step is to get the pennies to the bank where they can be cashed in. She has no idea how many there are, and each jar weighs upwards of 100 pounds. LaDean said she may have to take them out of the jugs and move them bowl by bowl, bit by bit, just like they accumulated.
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Thats a beauitful love story!!