Severin “Sev” Brockner Sorensen and Lilly Helena Jorgensen -- 66 years
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Severin “Sev” Brockner Sorensen and Lilly Helena Jorgensen -- 66 years.
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Long-term LoversSeverin’s parents immigrated to the US from Denmark in 1907; Lilly’s parents came three years later. In September 1931, Lilly arrived in Blair, Nebraska from Easton, California to attend Dana College. Sev recalled that he saw her the first day at registration and decided right then and there that this was the girl he was going to marry. The way Lilly told it, it was during the spring choir tour that their romance blossomed. Sev drove one of the busses when the choir was on tour. One day Lilly was tired of sitting in the back of the bus, so she went to stand by the front step. Then Sev invited her to sit on the metal folding chair by the driver’s seat. By the end of the tour they were ‘holding hands’ on the gear shift. These were the depression years and Lilly only had money for one year at Dana and had to return to California. Sev too ran out of money and took a teaching position in Oaks, Oklahoma. He sent an engagement ring to California on Lilly’s birthday in 1934. After graduation from Fresno State in 1935 Lilly too got a job as a teacher in Oaks. Sev finished his degree at South Dakota State in 1937, and he and Lilly were married on August 1, 1937 in Easton. Lilly made her wedding dress, copied from a picture in a San Francisco paper. Sev wore a three-piece wool suit -- in the California heat! The bride’s mother baked cookies and the cake for some 300 guests. ~~ In 1942 Sev and Lilly moved to Nebraska City, Nebraska, where they raised a family, taught school, and lived out their retirement years. Lilly died in 2003 and thus ended over six and a half decades of marriage.
