Harry And Louise, A Love Story: Saying Goodbye After 48 Years

RIVERHEAD, NY — Harry and Louise Wilkinson were married three months after they met in 1973, on the lawn of the Mattituck home they were renting — knowing, from the start, that their love was forever.

Harry died recently, just a year and a few months short of the moment that he would mark 50 years with his beloved bride.

This week, family and friends headed to Riverhead during the morning snow, flying, driving, traversing miles — all to say goodbye to a man who they say has touched their lives forever.

Funeral services begin Thursday for Harry Edward Wilkinson, 75, who died on Feb. 18 at Good Shepherd Hospice in Port Jefferson.

Born in Brooklyn on May 14, 1946 to Harry and Agnes (Rodnite) Wilkinson, he left a legacy marked by great honor: While serving in the United States Marine Corps from 1968 to 1972, he was awarded the Purple Heart medal, twice.

During his life, Harry had a passion for antiques and cars, and was a businessman known in recent years for his signature Bungalow Bar ice cream truck and the bright blue train he ran to the delight of children who rode, again and again.

But most of those who knew them both would likely say what they will forever remember foremost is Wilkinson's devotion to his wife Louise, their sons William and Phillip — and his open heart, always beside Louise in her mission to help others.

Their names, for friends who've known and loved them for decades, have long felt as one: "Harry and Louise," joined together in sentences and stories for a lifetime.

Describing their lifetime love story, Louise said in 1973, she was attending college and teaching in Southold, working weekends at the Coffee Pot, where the Railroad Museum of Long Island in Greenport is now sited, when she first saw Harry.

"He was working on the docks," Louise said. One day, she said, he came, while she was working, and said he was moving to a new place and needed someone to help him hang curtains. "I said, 'I know nothing about curtains,'" she said.

The next time their paths crossed, she was struggling to get her 8-track player out of her car; it was broken and she wanted to bring it to be repaired. "It wasn't working, and I was lying on the seat, trying to unscrew it. He came up and said, 'You know what you're doing?' At that point, the screws let go and I said, 'Here, hold this.' That was the first time we talked."

On their first date, on March 30, 1973, Harry took Louise to the Hy Ting Chinese restaurant in Riverhead. He told her he wanted to show her a newspaper article he had been featured in — and when he handed her the article, it was wrong-side up, featuring a man on the run after committing a crime.

"Those were the days before cell phones. I knew the police station was next door. I was trying to figure out how to get out of my seat and run to the police station," Louise laughed.

Then he flipped the article over and the on the other side was about Harry helping to take down a flag at the Rocky Point VFW.

All was well, and the rest, as the familiar saying goes, was history — their own treasured saga of love.

Louise still has that article framed; she brought it to Harry's 70th birthday party.

"We got married June 22, 1973," she said. "We dated for three months, that was it."

The reason for their brief courtship was, although both were young, they had known deep loss early on. Harry had lost his fiance and her child, who were killed when the car the two were in was hit by an intoxicated driver, she said. Louise had dated a man at the end of her junior year in college who drove a motorcycle and was killed in a crash.

Harry lost his father suddenly at 16, and his mom died when he was 10, from cancer.

Louise's father died when she was just 11 years old. "He went out sailing and never came back," she said. He went missing on Veterans Day and his body was not found until March 9. She and her mother had to move in with her grandmother and say goodbye to all she'd known.

"I went from a beautiful home in Southold where I had a lavender room to sharing a guest bedroom with my mother," Louise said. Although she loved her grandmother, her mother faced great struggles; back then, women couldn't easily have mortgages or bank accounts and her mom worked tirelessly to provide, she said. "We had months that were terrible," she said.

The deep losses marked them both, creating a collective sense of shared grief that bound Harry and Louise from the first.

"We'd both lost someone. We knew how precious life was," she said. "All of our lives together, we knew that in an instant, it could end."

Their marriage was shaped by that knowledge, garnered too soon when they were just children. "We never went to bed angry. We never said things we didn't mean," Louise said. "We just tried to be really good to each other."

She added. "We knew what it was like, to be just dazed and confused because of loss. We didn't want that to happen again."

Harry, who grew up in Sound Beach, was living in Greenport when the two met. They rented a house in Mattituck, where their life together began.

"We got married on the front lawn of that house in Mattituck, on Sigsbee Road," she said. "We had the trellis set up right on the front lawn."

48 years later, as he lay dying, Louise said: "He was disappointed he wasn't going to make 50." In his last days, as she sat beside him, not knowing if he could hear, she told him that it was okay, that he didn't need to worry not being with her on their 50th anniversary, that she would mark the day for them both, their love eternal.

Reflecting on his illness, Louise said Harry, a machine gunner in the war, first was exposed to Agent Orange while in Vietnam. When they first met, he had a problem with his thyroid that would lead to him being paralyzed, sometimes, in the middle of the night, unable to stand.

Searching for answers, they visited the Northport VA Medical Center for blood tests, chest X rays. Finally, he was diagnosed with Graves' disease, in which the thyroid overproduces hormones, Louise said. During treatment, he gained 75 lbs., weight he never was able to lose, she said. Later, in the last 10 years of his life, he struggled with heart conditions.

Her husband, Louise said, had a dozen stents, two different surgeries, and a quadruple bypass, during which he was given a defibrillator and a pacemaker.

In recent months, they were told that the valve on the left side of his heart wasn't working and plans were made to place a left ventricular assist device, or LVAD, in his chest and have a battery pack worn outside on his body. That procedure was slated for Christmastime, but the uptick in omicron numbers derailed that procedure until January, when the right side of his heart was also affected.

The doctor laid out hard choices: In surgery, Harry might die immediately, or soon after. His kidneys were also impacted; he was facing possible dialysis.

Louise sent a text, telling one son who was working that his dad needed him, now.

His family gathered beside him and Harry took control of his destiny. He asked the nurse to take out all the tubes, to disconnect him from the monitors.

"They took everything out," Louise said. "He was sitting there, listening to music, tapping his toes." In those next minutes, her husband's blood pressure stabilized, became better than it had been in weeks.

The next day, there was an opening at the Port Jefferson hospice.

"We never really talked to him, after that," Louise said. "I would say, 'Blink your eyes if you know I'm here, or squeeze my hand.'"

There were signs, moments of pure clarity when his family know, without a doubt, that Harry had heard them. One night the couple's son was leaving the room and said ,"'Night, Dad,'" Louise said. "He said, 'Good night, I'll see you tomorrow.' We had some good days, some funny stories," she said.

Still, she said, her husband was uncomfortable in the hospital gown, tied around his neck when he'd always been a V-neck man. "He would be ripping it off," she said.

Pain medications made him agitated, Louise said. After some time, she was able to get the dosage lowered.

Three days after that, she said, her husband passed.

"I was there," she said. Louise said her husband's longtime friend Jimbo had come in the morning; her sister-in-law and niece also visited. At one point, Louise went to walk her two dogs Pebbles and Bam Bam — the couple was devoted to their pups — and make herself a cup of coffee.

"When I came back, I turned around and looked at him — and I knew he was gone," she said.

She sat with the man she'd loved for a lifetime, put her hand gently on his chest, to check for breathing. Her sons came within minutes, to sit with her in a silent goodbye.

Louise believes Harry didn't want her to be there when he took his last breath; she, in turn, had spoken to him as she sat by his bedside for many long hours, telling him it was okay to go, although her heart was breaking.

"He lasted 19 days," she said. But in the end, Louise said, Harry had chosen his path, on his terms, the day he asked for the tubes and wires to be removed. "It was what he wanted," she said.

She chooses to remember Harry not in those last days, Louise said, but on January 30, when the tubes were removed and he was listening happily to music, feet tapping.

She chooses, she said, to focus on memories, the stories about a man with whom she shared a lifetime of conversation.

They were an unlikely match in some ways, Louise said. He fought in Vietnam, was shot in the leg and still wanted to go back; his two Purple Hearts are a testament to his valor, despite his fear.

"He wasn't even 20, and he thought he wasn't going to make it out of his teens. He felt that way in Vietnam," she said.

Meanwhle, Louise, while at Wagner College on Staten Island, protested the war and got thrown off the Staten Island ferry. "I'm an organizer," she said. "I had a group of 15 people with petitions on the ferry."

She was protesting the fact that young men could be sent to fight a war — but still couldn't vote in the United States, Louise said.

Their differing stances on the war was a concern. "We often thought, 'How are we going to work this out?'" she said.

But in their trademark fashion, they talked, communicated —and found common ground based on their firmly-shared inner core values.

Over the years, the pair was forever side by side, at home and in their work. They owned a string of businesses — including a Mattituck gas station, during the fuel shortages and oil crisis in the 1970s, when gas was rationed to odd and even days.

After that experience, she said, the pair decided "never again to sell things that people had to have," or needed with such urgency.

Instead, they opened shops selling Mexican pottery, one in Wading River and one in Riverhead; they were familiar faces on the flea market circuit, selling their brightly colored wares.

Later, Harry began to sell trailers — and finally, found great joy in delighting children with his signature 1964 Bungalow Bar ice cream truck, a familiar sight at East End festivals, car shows and other events.

The Bungalow Bar spoke to Harry's love for antiques — their home is filled with a jukebox, a popcorn machine, a Coca Cola machine, and more.

Sitting outside the ice cream truck at events while Louise handled the sales, Harry would regale his customers with stories about the Bungalow Bar's history. For example, Louise said, the ice cream truck has a bumper at an angle, "because kids used to run up the back, open the door, and throw out ice cream out to the other kids."

Harry also got children's trains, that he he'd bring to local farms and parties for children to ride.

Children, Louise said, were at the heart of everything the couple cared about. Their own two sons, and the plight of children less fortunate. Harry and Louise would go to Little Flower Children's Service to play with the kids there, bringing their red Irish setter Copper; the children loved the dog so much, eventually, Louise and Harry let him live at the facility with them.

Reflecting on the things about her husband that are forever woven into her heart, Louise said: "I liked his honest opinions. I liked him standing up for what was right. I liked what he stood for, as a Marine. I loved the way he felt about kids."

As a father, Louise said, of Harry, "I don't think that I could have found better."

Humor runs rich through her memories. Louise recalled a time she was away on a conference and saw, online, that her son was still awake at around 10 p.m. When she asked why, her son said his dad was sleeping, exhausted because a tree had fallen after he backed into it. "I told him the next morning, 'I think there's something you neglected to tell me!'" she laughed.

Then there was the time Harry called while she was away on business to ask where the ketchup was, she said, smiling.

Their tasks were divided: She cared for the house, he for the cars. "Over the past years, if the oil light came on, I would say, 'It's not my job, it's yours.' I'm realizing now, I have to do everything."

Another funny story involved the sale of a bakery the couple used to own in Jamesport. After it was sold, Harry announced the van was part of the deal, handing over the keys — but he'd never told Louise, who was flabbergasted. When she asked why he'd sold it, he said matter-of-factly that it still said Jamesport Bakery. "We could have painted over it!" she said.

Forever after, that story lived on: "Throughout our marriage, whenever he screwed up, I would look at him and say, 'And the van goes with it?'"

Her husband, she said, was a charmer, who drew people close with his warm smile, engaging stories, and huge heart. He was also loved by the ladies, she said: Soon after they were married, a young woman knocked at the door with Harry's laundry, which she'd been washing long before he met his bride, she laughed. "I told him, 'She's not coming over to do your laundry anymore!"

As they prepared to lay their husband and father to rest, Harry's family had all the items on his list checked off: Harry's trademark Hawaiian shirt, a bugler to play taps, the ice cream truck, Marines and veterans invited, an air-brushed casket that Harry chose himself years ago, and "a bad-ass hot rod hearse," his son Phil wrote.

"I think we've got everything you wanted covered, Dad," Phil wrote on Facebook. "Please don’t haunt me."

Looking back on what her husband taught her, Louise said she admired Harry's sense of commitment, something she values highly. Her husband, she said, was by her side in her mission of helping others, driving guests at the Maureen's Haven homeless program and helping her as she handed out food to the needy.

Honesty, she said, was the number one trait that kept their marriage strong.

As a father, Louise said: "The biggest gift he left his kids is his role modeling."

As he lay dying, Louise told her husband, trying so hard to hang on so that he could celebrate 50 years with her, that it was okay, that 48 years was a enough of a lifetime of love to sustain her always.

And when their 50th anniversary comes, she said: "I told him I will go back to Mattituck. And I'll stand on that front lawn, to mark 50 years. That's what I told him I'll do."

Services are set to take place Thursday, March 10 from 4 to 9 p.m. at Community Baptist Church, 5267 Sound Avenue, Riverhead. A funeral service will be held on Friday, March 11 at 10 a.m.

Interment will follow at at 12 noon at Calverton National Cemetery.

Memorial donations may be made to Riverhed Kiwanis Club, P.O. Box 572, Jamesport NY 11947 or to Rocky Point V.F.W. Post 6249, 109 King Road, Rocky Point NY 11778.

Arrangements were under the care of Tuthill Mangano Funeral Home in Riverhead.