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Couple’s love story comes full circle after nearly 50 years

Bill and Gerry Smalley at home in Beavercreek with old photos resemble a Nicholas Sparks novel: Teenagers in love split up and create lives apart from each other, but reunite 50 years later. The couple will serve as grand marshals for this year’s Main Elementary PTO 5K Run and Fun Walk.

Jim Witmer Bill and Gerry Smalley at home in Beavercreek with old photos resemble a Nicholas Sparks novel: Teenagers in love split up and create lives apart from each other, but reunite 50 years later. The couple will serve as grand marshals for this year’s Main Elementary PTO 5K Run and Fun Walk.

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By Mary McCarty, Staff Writer Updated 10:37 AM Thursday, May 13, 2010

Their 1953 junior prom seemed like a dream of elegance for two kids from the country: a dinner banquet at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Dayton. “We had shrimp cocktail,” recalled Bill Smalley. “We had never heard of such a thing.”

He had been smitten with his prom date, Gerry Johannes, since fifth grade, and by their junior year at Main High School in Beavercreek they were deeply in love. They slow-danced to “Moonlight Serenade” and felt certain there would be many romantic evenings to come.

By the next year, Bill had dropped out of high school and enlisted in the Army. “I begged him to wait till he finished high school,” Gerry recalled.

She couldn’t help but take it personally, as if he were running away from her.

Nearly 50 years later, she learned the truth: Bill was fleeing an abusive stepfather and a home life that had grown intolerable.

She knew that he couldn’t go out for football because his stepfather needed him for chores around the farm. She didn’t know that he was subjected to beatings in the cow stalls. “My stepfather had an explosive temper,” Bill said. “Even the cows were afraid of him.”

Bill kept in touch with Gerry for a while, but during his Army years he met and married his future wife, with whom he had three children.

Bill quit writing, with no explanation, and Gerry’s heart was broken. “When I found out Bill was married and had a child, I knew I had to move on with my life,” she recalled.

She met Frank Jetter on a blind date and married him at 21. It was a very good life: two kids and a career as a beloved kindergarten teacher. She was known as Mrs. Jetter to generations of Beavercreek kids whom she taught at Main Elementary School — the same campus as her former high school.

In 1999, after 42 years of marriage, Frank died from a rare neurodegenerative condition similar to Lou Gehrig’s disease. “I wasn’t interested in dating or in meeting another man,” Gerry recalled. “I couldn’t bear the thought of losing someone again.”

She missed Frank but her life was full — kids and grandkids, quilting, volunteer work. In 2001, a good friend and former classmate, Billie Stewart, was organizing a high school reunion and learned that Bill wanted to get in touch with Gerry. His first marriage ended in divorce and he lost his second wife, Dora Mae, to lung cancer after 25 years of marriage.

“I was a little reluctant, but I figured, ‘What harm can it do? He lives in Texas,’ ” Gerry said.

“She had more gray hair,” Bill said of their first reunion, “but she was the same person. I remembered her honesty and her humility.”

Gerry took Bill on a tour of his former town and he couldn’t believe the changes. In their youth, they had lived in the country in homes with no indoor plumbing. There were 63 students in their 1954 graduating class.

The only thing that hadn’t changed was their feelings for each other.

Gerry gradually warmed up to her former flame: “I had a very good marriage for many years and I missed the companionship. We like the same things. Bill is very gentle; he doesn’t like to argue or fight.”

He was very different from the stepfather who forced him to leave home at such a young age. It was healing for Gerry when she finally learned the truth. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded. “I was only 16, but maybe I could have done something to help.”

It was, after all, an era long before “Oprah.” “It was a very close-mouthed time,” Gerry said. “People didn’t confide their problems.”

Now they share everything, including Gerry’s long-ago hurt feelings “when you jilted me.”

Bill put his arms around and said, “I’m sorry, honey.”

She apparently accepted his apology long ago; the couple will celebrate their seventh wedding anniversary next week. Bill even made the ultimate sacrifice of leaving his beloved Texas to move back to Beavercreek — something he swore he would never do. “I fell in love all over again,” he explained.

“We have grown closer through time.”

They’ll celebrate by serving as grand marshals for the Main Elementary School PTO 5K Run and Fun Walk Saturday, May 15. Proceeds will be used to buy playground equipment for the school.

They are thrilled to be serving as grand marshals at the very place their love story began.

“Some days,” Bill said, “I look at her and still have to tell myself, ‘I really am married to Gerry Johannes.’ ”

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