Two elderly high school sweethearts have made awe-inspiring headlines by rekindling their past romance after spending 73 years apart.
Michigan’s Bill Hassinger, 90, and Joanne Blakkan, 92, dated back in high school after meeting on the school bus in the 19040s, the pair told WOODTV.
However, they split up due to Blakkan graduating before Hassinger and moving on to attend college.
“He took me to my senior prom, then I went off to Michigan State, and he was still back in high school, so we kind of each went our separate ways from then on,” she explained.
After Hassinger graduated, he married another woman and was soon drafted to serve in the Korean War. His wife, as well as two of their three children, have since passed away.
Blakkan also got married and had three children of her own.
The pair never spoke or saw each other again until the fall of 2022, when Blakkan’s daughter, Linda, helped them reconnect.
“Linda was helping me do some research on the computer looking for my former classmates that I’ve lost track of and I came across Bill’s name there and I researched a little bit further and saw that his wife had passed away the year before,” Blakkan told the outlet.
She also learned that he was living about 80 miles away from her Muskegon home, in the city of Manistee.
“I dropped him a note and said it would be fun to reminisce,” she added.
“I forgot who she was!” Hassinger teased. “No, that’s not true. I was surprised and I hadn’t thought of her or been around her you know, all this time since high school and I thought well that’s interesting, I’ll get together, so I called her and told her I’d be down.”
Unfortunately, Hassinger was down with a case of the coronavirus for a while, so Blakkan didn’t hear from him for a few weeks.
“Oh well, I guess he changed his mind,” she recalled thinking.
However, he was able to recover and finally called to set a date to get together.
It was September 6, 2022, when Hassinger was able to make the drive down to Muskegon and meet his ex-girlfriend for lunch.
“Neither one of us look the same after several years,” he recounted. “I wouldn’t have picked her out of a crowd and probably the same her for me but once we got over that little bit of a shock, the personalities and the way we feel about each other just came right back.”
“We just really went back to where we were in high school as far as feelings go,” Blakkan added.
Now, the couple spend every weekend with each other, and are hoping to move in together soon.
“We play a lot of cards — cribbage, gin, and we work puzzles. We walk every other day, and she does her exercises, and we go out to dinner maybe once a week, and the rest of the time, just enjoy each other’s company,” Hassinger said.
According to the 90-year-old, he enjoys taking his rekindled love to his “old buddies” he worked with as a state police officer after returning home from war and “showing her off.”
“… I just like being with her and I am proud of my service with the state police. It’s like a second family to me… always has been,” he said. “Once a trooper, always a trooper, I guess. But she’s well received and she tolerates that.”
Blakkan said that they’re weighing different options on how to live together, including moving Hassinger into her home or the pair moving into a senior complex.
“We want to be together, we just don’t know when,” she stated.
At the moment, they’re just trying to make up for lost time, and make the most of whatever time they have left.
“We realize at our age we don’t know how much time we have ahead of us. I mean it could be a few years yet, maybe tomorrow. How do any of us know? But in the meantime, we’re having a good time,” said Blakkan.
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