Sweet Lorraine

Imagine being married for 75 years.

75 years of good times, hard times, confusing times and well, just about every experience you can imagine. For Fred Stobaugh, being married to his wife Lorraine was the best part of his life:

“That was a wonderful 75 years. I often think I was dreaming or something, but it was real,” Fred Stobaugh said. “She was just the prettiest girl I ever saw. I just fell in love with her right there.”

When Lorraine died Fred was 96 years old and he did something most people his age don’t do…he wrote a song about Lorraine and entered it in a songwriting contest. The Brisbane Courier noted:

“Soon after Lorraine’s death, the Illinois man penned a song in his wife’s memory. He then, on impulse, sent the song into Green Shoe Studio’s singer-songwriter contest after he saw an ad for the competition in a local paper. The content required participants to upload songs onto the internet but Fred just sent the song in on paper and via snail-mail. He also knew that he couldn’t sing a note. At Green Shoe Studios, the song caught the attention of Jacob Colgan, who was so moved by Fred’s tribute that he decided to produce it.”

It is stories like these that our soul longs for…

It is stories like these that remind us that love and commitment are not only possible, but necessary…

It’s stories like these that redeem our understanding of love in a culture that equates love to a sexual impulse rather than the aquifer of all things good, beautiful and true.

Watch the video, you will be glad you did.

A Letter From Fred from Green Shoe Studio on Vimeo.