It was another era. In Everett, a young man was listening to his father’s advice regarding a marriage partner. In Seattle, the Ironmen were clawing their way into the Pacific Coast Hockey League playoffs.
It was 1949, and Lena Dire had just graduated from Everett High School.
"In those days, you didn’t just walk up to a girl and ask her out," 76-year-old Leonard Rochon said. His wife Lena, 72, shared her memories of their first meeting.
"I didn’t know Leonard at all, but a brother of his had been in my class," she said.
Rochon and his brother were driving to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Everett all those years ago when they spotted Lena and her sister walking to Mass. His father, Rochon said, had noticed the family of five girls and a boy at church and had hinted that one of the Dire daughters would make a fine bride for his son.
"They were pretty girls," Leonard Rochon recalled, then quickly said of his wife, "Doesn’t she look great?"
Too nervous to sit next to young Leonard in the car, Lena made her sister take the front seat. But when Leonard called soon after, she quickly accepted his invitation to a hockey game.
"I thought he was handsome," she said.
The couple hit it off at once. They don’t remember a thing about the game in the old Civic Ice Arena on Mercer Street at what’s now Seattle Center. The Ironmen would later become the Seattle Bombers, then the Americans and the Totems, followed by the Breakers and finally the Thunderbirds.
"My folks were immigrants from Canada, 100 miles east of Winnipeg," Leonard Rochon said. "They loved their hockey."
After serving in the Korean War, he took his father’s advice. He and Lena were married Oct. 4, 1952, in the church that brought them together.
They raised three sons and a daughter in their home near the church, for which they paid $7,750 in 1953 — it truly was another era. For 26 years, they’ve spent one weekend each fall working at the Everett Sausage Festival.
A fund-raiser for Catholic education at Immaculate Conception/Our Lady of Perpetual Help School, the festival starts its three-day run at noon today on the Perpetual Help parish grounds at Everett Avenue and Cedar Street.
"These people will not miss a Sausage Fest," said Frauna Hoglund, who helped start the festival 27 years ago with the Rochon family and others who were seeking to help the school and offset tuition costs.
The Bavarian-themed festival, with its sausage dinners, food booths, carnival rides, entertainment and beer garden, raised $65,000 last year, Hoglund said.
Indeed, Lena and Leonard Rochon won’t miss a Sausage Fest. Just like always, Lena will volunteer in the festival’s french-fry booth this afternoon.
"They have always spent their anniversary working in the french-fry booth. Nothing interfered with Sausage Fest," said the couple’s daughter, Theresa Lusier, who helped throw her parents a 50th anniversary celebration last October. The renewal of vows and party was a belated event, two weeks late because of the festival.
This year, the celebration can’t wait.
When the Rochons found out the Everett Silvertips’ first game on home ice would coincide with their 51st anniversary, they lined up tickets and let festival organizers know they’d be taking a night off.
"We had never missed. This year we said, we’ll help you Friday and Sunday, but no Saturday," Lena Rochon said.
"Mom and Dad bought tickets before they were even printed," her daughter added.
It is a new era. But for this couple, hockey’s arrival in Everett is a step back in time.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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