Staff Writer 

 Like any high school junior coming into a new school, Marilyn Veltri spent a lot of time on the phone getting to know her new friends. Only the phone she used wouldn’t send text messages, take pictures or fit in her pocket. In 1950, her house was one of four in a neighborhood in Brookfield, Conn. that shared a “four-party line” telephone system – a single open line for all four houses. 

“You would be talking and hear somebody pick up, so you would wrap up your conversation so they could make their call,” she said. “It was an honor system type of thing.”

One of the four houses was home to John Veltri, who said he quickly learned how to get “the scoop” on the new girl at school.

“If you were really careful when you picked up the receiver it wouldn’t click so you could sometimes carefully eavesdrop,” he said. “She was the new girl in a very small town, any way you had to gain information you had to just go ahead and do it.”

It wasn’t long before one of Marilyn’s conversations was too good for John to keep to himself.

“I interrupted them on the line,” he said. “I said I was going to spill the beans unless she went out with me.”

Marilyn said she refused to succumb to John’s conditions and “put him at the very bottom of the list” until they both graduated from high school in 1952. While Marilyn attended a junior college, John stayed in his hometown and continued working at a local gas station. 

“I was a car nut,” he said. “And every now and then [Marilyn] would pull in in her father’s car and I’d have to wash the windshield and try to be as nice to her as I could.”

By the time Marilyn returned to Brookfield in 1953, John had saved enough money to purchase a 1951 Oldsmobile 98 Sedan. Marilyn said the flashy vehicle was enough to convince her to take John up on his offer.

“He asked me out again and my aunt said ‘He has a nice car, give it a shot,’” she said. “First it was the car, then I took an interest in him.”

John said they drove the Oldsmobile to the Starlight Theater in New York for their first date in August 1953, much to her father’s dismay.

“Her family, outside of her father, seemed to like me, which I guess I understand now,” he said. “I was a 19-year-old kid working at a gas station, I wasn’t the greatest prospect. Now I think ‘Wow, I’d try to chase that [same] guy out of my house with a gun.’”

It didn’t take long for John and Marilyn to set their sights on marriage; despite her father’s position on their relationship, the couple was engaged on Christmas with the intention of getting married in spring 1954, Marilyn said. It only took two months, however, before the eager couple began to consider a secret marriage.

“Everybody went to Maryland to get married. You could just drive in, get married and drive out,” John said.

Fearing her father would send the police after them, Marilyn said they originally planned to bring her uncle along as a “chaperone” and to make sure John could not be prosecuted for transporting a minor – she was 17 – across state lines.

“We were all set but when [the uncle] came back he said ‘I can’t do it, your father will kill me,’” Marilyn said. “So we set out on our own.”

 The pair had the good fortune to not be pulled over, but were unlucky enough to arrive in Elkton, Md., on a Friday. 

“They told us we couldn’t get married until Monday, so we were stuck for two days,” John said. “We showed up at an inn and I told the innkeeper ‘Look, we’re getting married but her father might send the cops, so can we get different rooms at opposite ends of the motel and sign in under different names?’ he said ‘You know, we get a lot of young people in here and I understand,’ and even gave us free [television] for the night. We sat around wondering every time we saw a police car go by if they were coming for us.”

John and Marilyn were married Feb. 8, 1954, and returned to Brookfield for a year before John said he decided to enlist in the Army to begin to fill his eight-year military obligation. Not even military orders could keep them apart, as Marilyn said she had been instructed not to accompany her husband to basic training in Arkansas, but did anyway. 

“He called me and said ‘You know, there are some wives down here,’” she said. “So I drove down with a Texaco Grand road map and made it without getting lost.”

After basic training, John Veltir said he was stationed in Texas and eventually worked in a motor pool maintaining and driving a vehicle for a master sergeant. 

“It was a good deal really, everybody was nice,” he said. “Back then, young people knew they had to serve their time.”

Three years later, the couple returned to Brookfield with their first daughter, which John Veltri said “helped everything” between he and his father-in-law.

“She was the first grandchild, so everybody looked at us much differently,” he said.

After one daughter and more than 50 years combined experience working for the Kimberly-Clark company, Marilyn and John said they visited a friend’s cabin in the Higgins Beach area of Scarborough and were convinced it was the place for them to retire. 

Although the couple purchased a cottage on a lot in the Higgins Beach area in 1986, they later had the building removed from the property so they could build their own home, John said. 

“It’s important to have common goals in marriage,” John said. “One of our goals was to build a house.”

Now, when the Veltris aren’t visiting their family around the country – they have four grandchildren, two in college – they enjoy traveling around Scarborough and being involved in the local Higgins Beach community, John said. 

“We have had a very good life,” Marilyn said. “I don’t think either one of us expected it to be as good as it is.”