WHEATLAND — What began as a Valentine’s Day story about what makes a 66-year marriage work ended producing a variety of information.
Bob Noyce and Joyce Clipperton met when Joyce came out to work for her great uncle at the American Sunday School Union.
“I was just a teenager (Bob was five years older), but I sure thought that guy sitting behind me in Sunday school was handsome,” she said. “I was a farm girl from a family of 11 kids and hadn’t seen much. I went to country school and only wore shoes when it got cold or to Sunday school. Bob’s father was a highly respected minister for the American Sunday School Union.”
Bob was still in high school when he got drafted. Wyoming didn’t have enough men to fill its quota so boys were hurriedly graduated and sent off to World War II. When he returned from Europe, Bob went to LeTourneau Technical Institute. On a trip home for summer vacation he met Joyce.
After a very short courtship, in the summer of 1951 he asked her to marry him at the McGehee Ranch where she was visiting her sister.
“I told God if he (Bob) proposes before the summer is over, then he’s the right man, and he did!”
In minus 20 degree weather, Christmas Day 1951, in Butterfield, Minnesota, Bob Noyce married Joyce, who was attending Grace Bible Institute in Omaha. The couple headed back to Texas where Bob was in school.
As most couples will attest to, even being in love does not make married life easy. Raising two children, Lenny and Ruth (each adopted at just a few days old); running a business (Noyce’s Friendly Shop for 33 years); teaching music lessons (34 years); and working for Lock Trucking (14 years) and Laramie River Station (12 years) all made for a hectic life. The family also had a bell choir using bells Bob tuned from turkey, sheep and cow bells purchased from what was then Bohl’s Hardware, where the Community Thrift Store is now.
When asked what was the best Valentine’s gift she ever received, without hesitation Joyce said, “Five-foot grand piano with a big red bow on the top.” It has a place of honor in her living room, along with an organ like the one she bought for 50 cents when she was 10.
But it wasn’t pianos that made the marriage stick together, it was forgiveness. This virtue was illustrated most effectively in Joyce’s quote, “The more time you spend thinking about what’s wrong, the less time you have to think about what’s right.”
“You can’t do it all by yourself; it takes two to make a marriage,” Bob added.
