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Polson couple still going strong after 74 years

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Change is said to be the one constant in life, but while Eddie and Gracie Schumacher have seen plenty of change in their 90-plus years, they’ve also had another constant: each other.

At 94, Eddie’s bright blue eyes twinkle as he shares his advice for a long, healthy life and marriage.

“Keep your mouth shut,” he says, chuckling.

Shaking her head, 91-year-old Gracie smiles and chimes in, “We’ve just been real lucky all our life.

“We made it through everything and getting in a little fight over something, neither one of us pulled out.”

While their affection for each other is obvious, Eddie and Gracie know that without hard work, they wouldn’t be where they are now. Perhaps the American work ethic has changed less in Montana than in many parts of the country, but the Schumachers still notice a difference compared to their early lives. 

In fact, when Eddie first drove over Polson Hill in a Model T Ford with his parents and five siblings, the most exciting sight to him was all the apple trees lining the highway. 

“Of course we didn’t have no fruit trees back in the eastern part (of Montana),” Eddie explained.

It was 1925, and 9-year-old Eddie and his family had just driven from Circle, Mont., to Polson, where Eddie would make his home from then on. Like many families in Eastern Montana, the Schumachers moved west in search of a better place to weather the Great Depression. 

“You know, they talk about depression now ... well, the old depression way back was so different; it don’t seem to us like there’s much of a depression, really,” Eddie explained. 

“Everybody was poor, but everybody was happy,” Gracie added.

Entertainment in the Eddie and Gracie’s early years of marriage usually meant an evening at a friend’s home playing cards and eating fudge, if there was enough sugar to make it, or popcorn. 

“And that was our big celebration,” Gracie said.

In 74 years together, the Schumachers have had many celebrations. The couple were married in 1936 after meeting at a dance where Eddie played guitar in the band, and except for Eddie’s stint in the South Pacific during World War II, they’ve been inseparable. Their first home was one of six staterooms on the Klondike Ferry, the steamboat Eddie worked on as a fireman for several years before the war. It was a cozy apartment, Gracie remembers, and almost sank only once.

“We had just played a dance, and we came back and the damn boat was sinking,” Eddie said. “They had to pump it out.”

After he was drafted in the first round of picks from Lake County, Eddie served in the South Pacific until World War II ended. 

“(Eddie) was gone for almost the whole duration of the war ... he was overseas all those years, and I didn’t see him,” Gracie remembered. While Eddie was away, Gracie, who was originally from Conrad, Mont., stayed with family in Washington and worked at a factory that made doors for military barracks. Although the two exchanged letters frequently, communication was a far cry from the e-mails, video chats and phone calls American soldiers have access to today.

“It was pretty lonesome ... we really missed each other, of course, all those years,” Gracie said.

When Eddie was discharged at Fort Lewis, Wash., he and Gracie returned to Polson, where their two daughters were soon born. Eddie continued to work on steamboats on Flathead Lake until they were phased out, hauling loads of lumber and peas — pea farming was big in the Flathead Valley at the time, he said — across the lake.

“As far as I can figure out, I’m the last of the old steamboat men,” Eddie said. “I worked on a lot of boats.”

He also worked in sawmills, with stints at Plum Creek and Dupuis Lumber Company before retiring in the early 1970s. And for “years and years,” Gracie waited tables on weekends at the Ranch, Polson’s old dance hall and restaurant, as well as working at the Lake County Courthouse for 30 years. She retired in 1983 as the county’s chief deputy treasurer.

Then she was free to concentrate on her favorite pastime: bowling.

“I bowled here in the same city association for 53 years without missing a year,” Gracie said proudly. “I love my bowling. That was the hardest thing I had to do … I had to quit bowling on account I had surgery on both knees.”

But bowling gave her more than something to do, Gracie added, and it made her realize the truth of what her older friends had been telling her for years.

“I have so many friends ... you know, (my older friends) used to say, ‘You know Gracie, you got lots of old friends, but it’s a good idea to make a bunch of new young friends, because one of these days your old friends are gonna be gone,’” she said. 

Thanks to her bowling experience, Gracie has made and kept many lifelong friends that she’s happy to say are younger than her. She and Eddie have been richly blessed, she said.

“I just love people, and we’ve got lots of friends.”

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