Endless love

By Avani Nadkarni/of The Herald

Acemetery is an unlikely setting for a lifelong love story. For Bob McConaughy, as well as several others who regularly visit the Sumner City Cemetery to visit deceased loved ones, it is reality.

McConaughy, a 91-year-old Sumner resident, met his wife, Helen, at a graveyard in Iowa.

“She was in a car that turned into a cemetery. I followed her,” McConaughy recalled. “We waved.”

Fourteen-year-old Helen laughed at 17-year-old McConaughy, saying they were too young. Four years later, in 1940, they did tie the knot.

Their romance lasted nearly seven decades and included two daughters, six grandchildren and, now, seven great-grandchildren. It involved packing the children up in the family motorhome to drive to Disneyland or to Arizona on golfing trips.

“We had such a special marriage,” McConaughy said. “We were buddy buddies.”

Now, more than two years after his wife passed away, McConaughy is back at a cemetery several times a week. At 91, he’s still self-sufficient: He drives his gold Toyota Camry with a yellow cross hanging from the rearview mirror and parks near the Sumner City Cemetery plot where Helen is buried. He brings fresh flowers to put on the site because Helen was “a wonderful flower lover” and often kneels down on the ground and kisses her plot.

“It was awful hard. It still is,” he said wistfully. “People always say ‘You’ll get over it in a year,’ but it’s been over two years and I still miss her so much.”

Although other regular visitors often socialize with each other, McConaughy tends to stick mostly to himself when he’s at the cemetery. He said he often talks to his late wife.

“I tell her how lonesome I am, I’ll tell her how much I love her,” McConaughy said. “People might think I’m crazy, but it helps me.”

His daughters, Donna Murphy and Sharon Wells, live close, one in Bonney Lake and one in Shelton. He said his daughters or many friends invite him over for dinner, but he seldom accepts.

“I just don’t feel like having company anymore,” he explained.

He does enjoy crossword puzzles and is a huge sports fan — he often comes to the cemetery donning a Raiders coat. He also lights up when speaking of great-granddaughters, six-year-old Madison Campbell and 11-year-old Mackinsie Campbell. The McAlder Elementary students are picked up from school by their great-grandfather on Tuesday nights and stay with him overnight. He cooks them dinner.

“They do me a lot of good,” he said. “They’re such wonderful kids.”

McConaughy also stops by the cemetery office to see director John Wells and clerk Darlene Engels, who helped him and Helen pick out plots two decades ago.

“(Engels) helped a lot,” he said. “They’re all wonderful people. They keep this cemetery well-combed.”

Although McConaughy may seem like one of few regulars, Wells said there is a large group of people who visit many times a week, as many as four times a day. One man, Walter “Bob” Marcotte, came twice a day to visit the mausoleum after his beloved wife Magdelan passed away in 2004. Eventually, Wells and the cemetery staff set up a folding chair so the elderly man could sit comfortably. When he passed away in 2008, the cemetery staff attended his funeral. They now leave the folding chair in the mausoleum near where he and his wife are laid to rest. Other cemetery regulars who had befriended Marcotte along the way make sure he and his wife’s plots are stocked with fresh flowers.

“It was tough,” Wells said of Marcotte’s service. “We came in our work clothes, but that’s how Bob knew us. You befriend them and when they pass, it’s tough.”

As for McConaughy, he said he will continue to come yearround, rain or shine, for as long as he can. He wants to be close to his beloved wife.

“She made me very happy (and) I know I got a beautiful, wonderful girl,” he said. “That’s why I can’t get over her.”