John and Joann Pike remember their first impressions of each other clearly, even though it was over 65 years ago. “I’m gonna marry him,” Joann recalled recently. “He’s handsome and a basketball player.
All the girls looked at him. But guess what, I looked at him and he looked at me. He was smart.
” Joann was right. She married John. The couple, now both 77, celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary on June 25.
They married on that date in 1964, but had known each other for longer. Joann and John, who is one week younger than his wife, started dating at age 13 when they were both in eighth grade and living in Fresno, Calif. Joann said he was the boy next door.
They rode the bus together and talked on the phone for hours. They could almost see each other through the windows of the two pastures between their houses. John said he was always looking for Joann whether it was next door through the windows pantry that overlooked her house or in the school.
They didn’t have classes together, maybe just one, and John said he couldn’t get enough of his future wife’s beauty even then. Joann’s father had a farm of 13,000 chickens every six months, raised them to fryers, and then sold them and started all over. John worked on her father’s farm because they needed help.
During lunch breaks, the young couple would go for 19-cent burgers with their earnings. The first date Joann and John recall was in the next town over when they watched “The Birds,” a 1963 horror-thriller film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. During the date, John started to hold Joann’s hand.
The couple has lived in Foxboro for 34 years, coming here so their son Tad could attend the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown. They have two other children, Zackary and Cassandra, and eight grandchildren. John worked as a special education teacher at Perkins for almost 40 years, also serving as director and principal there as well.
Joann worked as an activity director at the Pleasant Manor Nursing Home in Attleboro for 27 years. Catherine Haggerty, 28, the Pikes’ granddaughter who lives with them part-time to help them along with other family members, says she’s in awe of her grandparents’ love. “My Mimi and Papa take care of each other in their old age,” she said.
“Listening to old music, my papa sings to her. He takes his time walking from room to room, but yells to her, ‘I’m coming for you baby,’ and it puts a smile on their faces.” Haggerty recalls seeing her grandparents looking through all their pictures, when John turned to Joann and said, “Look at the pretty girl.
No wonder I scooped you up.” Haggerty said her grandparents are always laughing, and Joann gives kisses to John during blood pressure checks, saying it helps it go up. “I’m in awe of the love I witness between the two of them,” she said.
Haggerty said her favorite memories of her grandparents come from times at church. “My grandparents introduced God to me at a very young age,” she said. “I remember doing readings with my papa, recording the prayers we were learning and playing them back to find where we would have messed up,” she said.
Also, she remembers her grandmother’s treats, which included Portuguese bread and empanadas. “We were probably the best-fed kids in town,” Haggerty said. “When our family got together it always looked like a buffet for an army when I was growing up.
My grandparents loved us, nurtured us all, and still do. Encouraging us in everything we do. They’re at every game.
They make calls regularly to keep up with the business of the whole big loving family we have.” For John and Joann, when asked about their secret and or tips to keep the marriage for over six decades, Joann had no hesitation in citing a simple method. “It is about true love,” she said.
“Love is more than just saying it. Love is more than a word. My husband says love is a plan.
”.
