CROWN POINT, Ind. (AP) - Melvin and Randy Berlin ambled across a busy Main Street to once again stand in the shadow of the old Lake County Courthouse.
“We thought that Crown Point, Indiana, might like to know what happened to us,” Randy said as she held onto her husband’s arm.
It had been 70 years since the couple last made a fateful trek to the courthouse on the Crown Point square, which at that time served as a ’round-the-clock “marriage mill.” Back then, wedding chapels on the square operated 24 hours a day, with no waiting restrictions on blood tests for eager couples.
These newlyweds included celebrities such as Rudolf Valentino, Joe Di Maggio, Red Grange, Muhammad Ali, and Joe and Katherine Jackson. During its heyday, the courthouse was staffed by rotating justices of the peace, including Harvey Minas, known for performing unusual wedding ceremonies.
On Aug. 23, 1948, he presided over the unusually everlasting marriage of Melvin and Randy Berlin, who eloped from their parent’s Chicago homes. The two 19-year-old sweethearts drove the car of Melvin’s father, though they didn’t tell a soul why they needed it or where they were going.
“The judge joked with us, saying, ’You forgot the baby,’” Melvin, 89, recalled of that day.
Randy wasn’t pregnant. She simply couldn’t wait until their planned wedding date, Nov. 14, 1948, to marry Melvin, who gave her an engagement ring just a couple days earlier.
“We were just kids, but we really loved each other,” Randy, 89, recalled with a gentle smile. “Back then, you weren’t supposed to consummate your love before marriage. And everybody knew you could get married in Crown Point, Indiana.”
They were both born and raised in Chicago, attending Von Steuben High School.
“We knew each other casually, not romantically,” Randy said. “But I thought he showed promise.”
After graduating, they both attended the University of Illinois in Champaign, where they met again on a train ride home to Chicago. They talked mostly about American history before writing their own history, beginning that day.
“It seemed like everybody else faded away and it was just the two of us talking on that train,” Randy said. “Oh, the talking we did that day.”
They’ve been talking ever since, on trains and planes, in boardrooms and bedrooms, and at swanky nightclubs and ritzy high-rises.
The next day after the train ride, Melvin called Randy on the phone as he promised. They soon became an item.
“My parents loved Melvin more than they loved me,” Randy joked.
Melvin could only smile at the dusty memory.
On Nov. 14, 1948, the couple celebrated their marriage with their families, friends and a formal public announcement. The next day, they took another long train ride to Colorado Springs to celebrate their honeymoon.
Neither of them finished college at the University of Illinois. Much grander accolades awaited them.
Melvin, who possessed a highly intuitive business savvy, started his own company with only a $1,000 investment. It transformed, among other successful endeavors, into Berlin Packaging and Berlin Metals, located in Hammond, a multi-million dollar firm.
The couple has three sons who, like their parents, are successful professionals, with two of them still involved in the family businesses.
In 2014, the trade publication American Metals Market named Berlin Metals the best service center in the nation. Earlier this year, it sold for an undisclosed sum to Olympic Steel, handsomely rewarding the Berlins after decades of planning and working.
“We enjoy our life,” Randy said modestly.
After Melvin’s business savvy started paying financial rewards, he supported Randy’s longtime dream of returning to college. Since adolescence, she fancied becoming a student at the University of Chicago.
“Back then, it wasn’t important for a girl to get a secondary education,” she said. “But it was to me.”
In 1991, she earned a law degree from Loyola University Chicago Law School, concentrating her studies on employment and labor law. She used her expertise as a board member and legal adviser for Berlin Packaging, headquartered in Chicago.
Randy began teaching “Law and Literature,” a course she created, at Loyola Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, a teenage dream that became a reality in her 60s. She also created and developed the nationwide Junior Great Books Discussion Program, involving thousands of schools in the country.
“I’ve always had an interest in the great books of English literature,” she said.
The couple, who has eight grandchildren and three great-grandkids, have since become well-known philanthropists in Chicago and beyond. Not only to their beloved University of Chicago with a $3 million gift.
They’ve also supported the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Lake Forest College, and other educational and philanthropic organizations. In 2008, Loyola University’s School of Law received a $500,000 gift from the couple.
“We did all of this together, as we have done everything since we got married,” Randy said.
When I looked into their 89-year-old eyes, I could still see a glimmer of them at 19, I told them. The young sweethearts with grand plans who stole away to get hitched without telling a soul.
She leaned toward Melvin and whispered, “Did I leave anything out?”
He smiled and said no.
The couple has seven decades of formal events and informal conversations between them.
“We have become a repository of history,” Randy said. “We also have become a repository of our own history together.”
It’s now a complete chapter of American history, the same subject they discussed on that first train ride together.
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Source: Post-Tribune
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Information from: Post-Tribune, http://posttrib.chicagotribune.com/
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