Rebekah Hoffmann
Contributing Writer

"We had so much fun," recalled Pearl Rusteberg of Swansea of the whirlwind courtship she had in her native New York State in 1942 with the Illinois soldier who would later become her husband. "We went to dances, war bond rallies....You wouldn't believe the number of movie stars we met," she reminisced, showing a sparkle and vitality that belies her 88 years.

"In those days, you couldn't get nylons unless you were married to a military man (because of war shortages). Somehow, though, he got them for me."

But this fairy tale romance had to endure the harsh realities of World War II. Roy Rusteberg of Valmeyer, Ill., was shipped off to Europe with the 5th Armored Division just a few months after the couple met. And though he proposed marriage before his departure, Pearl, no stranger to the hardships facing single parents and their offspring, demurred.

"It would have been just my luck that I would have gotten pregnant and had a baby and then he would've gotten killed," she said, shuttering in recollection of her own hardscrabble upbringing during the Great Depression.

So Roy, an Army staff sergeant and tank driver, shipped out with no commitments on either side, but "he said if he made it back home alive, he would get in touch with me."

For four long years, there were letters -- and only letters -- as he rolled across France, Belgium, Luxemburg and Germany, fighting in at least five of the major battles of WWII, including the Battle of the Bulge. In one of these conflicts, Roy's tank was hit, and his gunner lost both legs. Through some miracle, Roy escaped harm.

Indeed, the world was an uncertain place for almost everyone in those days. And, many people would have said, Pearl and Roy were an unlikely couple. But, for them, it was a perfect match.

'MUTT AND JEFF'

At the time of their first meeting, Pearl was 19 and tiny (just 89 pounds), a full-blooded Italian Catholic with black hair and a spunky, social nature.

Five years her senior, Roy was a tall, blue-eyed Protestant of German descent, quiet yet very capable.

And the two had grown up very differently.

Pearl was born April 14, 1923, in Frankfort, N.Y., seventh of 10 children (nine girls, one boy) with a fraternal twin sister who arrived just minutes after her. She grew up in a single parent household headed by her immigrant mother after her father's death when she was in grade school.

"My uncle started a fireworks and spaghetti factory in Rochester (N.Y.), and he called my mother in Italy and said, 'Come work for me.'"

She continued, "(Us kids) were all about 18 months apart, and my mom was a very good mother. She sewed all of our clothes. I remember us all walking hand-in-hand going to church."

Pearl's mother was also a proud, independent woman who refused to sign up for assistance during the Depression after Pearl's father died.

Roy was reared by his grandmother from infancy essentially as an only child after his mother was left permanently incapacitated by influenza in the 1918 epidemic.

A CHANCE MEETING

After Pearl Harbor and President Franklin Roosevelt's declaration of war, Roy had enlisted in the United States Army rather than wait around to be drafted. He wound up at Fort Drum in Pine Camp, N.Y. as the country was gearing up for the war.

Meanwhile Pearl and her family had weathered her father's death and the Depression. She and her siblings went to work with her mother when not in school themselves or hired out to do farm work to help earn enough money for the family to survive. After graduating from high school, Pearl had become a dress designer in a garment factory.

Both wound up in the same restaurant one Saturday night, seated at opposite tables, Pearl with her twin sister and Roy with a fellow soldier. The waiter told Pearl and her sister that the soldiers wanted to buy them a drink, and they acquiesced. Later, they allowed the men to join them at their table because Pearl thought Roy was "so handsome."

She recalled, "I told my sister, 'I'll take the tall one (Roy); you take the other one."

But the attraction wasn't just skin deep. "He was so polite, such a nice, nice guy."

In the end, Roy and his buddy went to the movies with Pearl and her sister.

And the next day, he called her at home.

Pearl noted, "We had told our mom that we had met the nicest boys. And she said, 'Invite them for dinner.'"

After eating her mother's tasty pasta and receiving her blessing, the two couples - Pearl and Roy and her sister and the Army buddy - began going out on her regular basis ....that is, until Uncle Sam decided it was time for Roy to head to the front.

BECOMING 'ROSIE THE RIVETER'

After that, work to support the war effort kept Pearl busy on the homefront.

She and many other women were pulled from their regular factory jobs and placed in factories with defense contracts producing military supplies. Pearl worked in factories manufacturing shovels, guns and wire.

A long wait

During their long years apart, they wrote each other regularly but wartime censorship meant that Roy couldn't tell Pearl much about what was really happening on the battlefront. As the months drug on, she clung to her belief that he would survive though six close friends of hers had already perished in the fight.

DEAD OR ALIVE

Finally, just as it seemed only a matter of time before the United States and its allies would achieve victory, Pearl's letters to Roy started coming back to her stamped "Killed In Action."

Unable to accept the idea that he was dead and unable to get any official word, Pearl doggedly continued writing. It wasn't until a letter from him finally got through that she knew for sure that he was alive. When the war was over, army officials tried to get Roy to stay in the military because he was fluent in German, but he refused.

And, just as he had promised Pearl in 1942, Roy contacted her as soon as he got stateside and was formally discharged from the military in late 1945.

REUNION

They planned to marry but before scheduling a wedding in New York, Pearl was to ride the train to St. Louis for their long, awaited reunion.

The trip itself was a leap of faith for the then 23-year old Pearl, who traveled the thousand-mile distance alone on a train brimming with returning soldiers.

When she arrived, Roy was nowhere in sight, but "I knew he wouldn't let me down."

Soon she looked up to see him coming through the door. He had lost weight and seemed edgier than before, but, to her, he was as handsome as ever.

IMPROMPTU WEDDING

The first order of business during her planned two-week stay was meeting his family.

"I just loved his grandmother, and she loved me," Pearl said of the one who would later teach her how to quilt and cook some of Roy's favorite German dishes.

Meanwhile, Roy, who had been actively looking for work on her arrival, found a job at Monsanto.

As Pearl's departure date inched closer, she and Roy had a heart-to-heart talk.

"He said, 'You know we will save a lot of money if we just get married while you are here,' And even though I already had the wedding planned (back in New York), I said, 'Yeah, I've been thinking that too.' So I called my mother and told her, and we went ahead and got married."

The wedding ceremony was held Feb. 20, 1946, at his home church. (They later married a second time, in a Catholic church to satisfy Pearl's mother.)

THE AMERICAN DREAM

The newlyweds rented a house in Dupo. They lived on Roy's $30 weekly paycheck, and Pearl didn't work outside the home in deference to her new husband's wishes.

"I had always wanted to be a doctor or a nurse, but Roy was funny about that. He wanted me to stay at home."

Roy struggled with nightmares in the early months of their marriage.

"That first year, he thought he was still in a war zone," she noted.

Eleven months after the wedding, the couple's first child, Carol, was born. And by their second anniversary, they were moving into a home of their own in Columbia, built in part by Roy's own hands.

"He was a man who could do anything. He could have built a castle if he had wanted to."

In both the rental house and in the new house, the couple welcomed hundreds of Roy's old army buddies and their families as visitors for many years.

"Our house was known as the 'Do Drop Inn.' It was not unusual for us to have 10 from out-of-state on the weekend. And don't you think I worked. I'd borrow cots and bake all day the day before. For breakfast, I'd make like 10 pounds of bacon.

"They all liked to come to Pearl's. I used to say they liked those Italian meals I made, but Roy said, 'No, they like you.' I enjoyed having all that company, and I didn't mind the work."

Sometimes the couple and their friends would go out.

"We went dancing, we went to bars, we did all the same things like today but just not as wild, and families did things all together."

And life was good mostly.

But after having baby Carol right away, the couple had a 10-year wait before daughter Cheryl arrived. Son Tony, born in 1961, completed their family.

'A VERY GOOD MAN'

Pearl said her impressions of her husband from the night they first met never changed.

"He was a very good man. He never swore at me although I swore at him a few times. And he was a very good father."

The marriage worked she said because "we always talked things over; we didn't just get mad and want a divorce. We never went to sleep angry." In 1988 Roy was diagnosed with lymphoma. He died the following year after 43 years of marriage.

LIFE AFTER ROY

Pearl has had some health problems of her own in recent years. Diagnosed as diabetic in 1998, she had a leg amputated in 2009 due to complications and rehabbed for a few months afterwards at a local nursing home.

But she continues to live independently.

"I've told my children (and seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren), 'I love you kids, but I'm not gonna live with any of you."

Other things haven't changed. She still likes to be around people. She still likes to bake. And she still likes to dance.

"Now I bake: cake, cookies, cupcakes... and call the neighbors and say, 'The bakery's open!"

And whenever she gets the chance, she gets out, like recently when she went to a Chicken and Beer Dance.

"A few of them rolled me out on the dance floor (in my wheelchair). It was so fun."