Couple's link of love is stronger than life

Kay and Don Clark were not the kind of people you read about, except, perhaps, in fiction.

Although each week Don would buy Kay a bouquet of carnations, and they spent countless evenings dancing at the officer's club in Philadelphia's Naval Square, theirs was no romance of grand sweep or wild passion. It was better, their children say, because it was real.

And when, at the close of summer, their love story ended, it was as if in a fairy tale.

After 56 years of marriage, they died within three hours of each other, lying side by side in a nursing home in Honey Brook, holding hands.

There was no suicide pact. They were not in a car accident. Whether by luck, will, serendipity or God's plan, they died in near-perfect synchrony.

"They taught us about what love really is - two individuals who grow into a single soul," said their eldest daughter, Beth Ricci.

Kay and Don had lived quiet lives in the Pennsylvania suburbs, first in Broomall and later in Coatesville. He was a pharmacist who worked in sales for Merck & Co. She was a nurse in the Marple Newtown School District. They raised three children, attended church regularly, and weathered life's usual squalls, nothing that couldn't be healed with a kiss and an apology.

Ricci, 55, opened her parents' wedding album Monday. It was covered in ivory leather, the binding dried and cracked.

On the first page, the calligrapher had recorded in loopy script: Bride, Kathryn Ann Porter. Groom, Donald Gould Clark. Married May 5, 1956, in St. John's Lutheran Church in Melrose Park.

Inside, the photographs capture a couple blissfully mismatched. She, in a white gown with long lace sleeves and a full princess skirt, her dark-rimmed glasses framing a full face and short wavy hair. He, nearly a foot taller and skinny as a garden hoe, in a too-big white dinner jacket and black trousers.

Kay, who grew up in Hatboro, earned her undergraduate and master's degrees in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania and went back to work full-time after her youngest child, John, entered school.

"It wasn't always easy," said Ricci, 55, who followed her mother into nursing. "My father traveled a lot. He'd be gone sometimes for weeks."

Sometimes Kay showed the strain.

"Once, I remember, my mom was just tired," said Ricci's sister, Kathryn Petersen, now 52 and assistant to the vice president for student development at Loyola College in Baltimore. "We were in the kitchen. I can't remember if the car had broken down or what happened, but with typical teenage arrogance, I said, 'Why don't you just tell Dad that he shouldn't travel so much?' "

"He loves what he does. And I love him," her mother said, as Petersen recalled. "I would never ask him to give that up."

When he was home, Don was attentive and honored family traditions. Some were solemn. Every night, they would hold hands around the table and say a prayer in German, in deference to Kay's ancestral roots. Some were not. Once, after an early spring snowstorm, he led the squealing troops out to hunt for Easter eggs in the snow.

He and Kay sometimes lost patience with each other, but they never forfeited their individuality, said Ricci.

Her mother loved fresh air, but her father "could live indoors with the windows closed all the time," Ricci said. So as soon as Don left the house in the morning, Kay would throw open the sashes. She'd tell him to call on the way home in case she needed him to pick something up, but really she wanted to make sure the windows were back down in time.

He liked reading the newspaper and doing the crossword. She liked crafts with the children and watching the Phillies.

Politically, too, they were often at odds. She was the more liberal. "They'd take different stands and raise their voices," Petersen recalled. "But at the end they'd say, 'We'll have to agree to disagree.' "

As their work life was winding down, Don and Kay traveled more. They took trips to the Dakotas, Georgia, Alaska, England, and the Caribbean. Sometimes they brought one or more of their eight grandchildren along.

After they retired, she spent more time knitting, making baby hats to donate to the hospital and volunteering for a literacy program. A former Army medical corps reservist and Eagle Scout, Don got involved with local Boy Scouts and ran a marksmanship program at a summer camp.

On their 50th anniversary, she gave him a card and wrote, "Who w o u l d h a v e thought that we would ever reach our 50th and be here for each other? My love always, Your Kay."

A few years ago, they sold their house and moved closer to Ricci and her family. Don, a lifelong smoker (until he quit abruptly at 80), had emphysema and heart problems. Kay had suffered for decades from asthma. Still, they were able to live independently.

Then, on the day after Christmas 2011, Don, unable to breathe, left home in an ambulance. They would never fall asleep beside each another again. In January, Kay got pneumonia. For the next seven months, they were in and out of hospitals.

By mid-August, they occupied rooms at opposite ends of the hall at the nursing home in Tel Hai Retirement Community in Honey Brook, Chester County.

Because of differences in their insurance coverage, they could not stay in the same room, explained Christine Fritzen, director of rehabilitation. But their children or staff arranged for them to share meals or visit every day.

Debilitated as they were, Fritzen said, they kept their wit and will. During a rehabilitation session in the gym, Kay, who had suffered a stroke and was often uncommunicative, overheard Don resisting his therapist, who was urging him to lift wrist weights to strengthen his arms.

"Don was the stoic father figure. He was the one who had always made decisions," said Fritzen. "So he'd challenge us. He wanted answers."

Suddenly, Kay called out. "Oh, Don," she chided, "just be quiet!"

Everyone in the room who was married laughed, Fritzen said, because they all recognized the tone and the comfortable friction of a relationship sanded smooth by time.

On Aug. 29, Don, 82, and Kay, 84, both began to drift. Their children rushed to Tel Hai, along with most of the grandchildren. (One was about to go into labor with the Clarks' second greatgrandson.) At the family's request, with help from the staff, a room was cleared so their hospital beds could be aligned side by side.

Kay was no longer conscious and Don's eyes were shut, but when the safety bars between them were lowered, Ricci said, he reached out and found her hand, still warm, her nails freshly polished in red. Prayers were read. Hymns filled the room from a phone with a Pandora app.

Kay died at 3:40 that afternoon. Shortly afterward, Don sat up in bed, raised his arms, and called out, "Wait!"

Ricci called the funeral home. "Don't come yet," she said. "He'll be passing soon, too."

The "widower's effect" is well-proven. Numerous studies have found that when a couple have lived a lifetime together, when one dies, the other often follows shortly. Within months or weeks, sometimes sooner. But rarely in the space of a few hours.

"We can't wait for days," the undertaker said.

"It's not going to be days," Ricci told him.

Don had settled back into his pillow, agitated. His children helped him find Kay's hand again. At 6:50. he took his last breath.

They were cremated, their ashes placed in a double urn that was buried in a cemetery near the home where they had lived their lives well, and together.

Contact Melissa Dribben at 215-854-2590 or mdribben@phillynews.com.