Matters of the Heart: Jim and Edith Zeitz Celebrate 75th Wedding Anniversary
Seventy-five years ago, January 15th Jim and Edith Zeitz were married at the Robbins Church on Bunker Road, Aurelius Township, Michigan. From there the wedding party travelled to the home of her parents, Luman and Luella Klink. That afternoon the newlyweds went home to their small trailer parked in Jim’s Uncle Albert Royston’s yard on Island Road, Eaton Rapids. Edith set to work getting supper and Jim went out to milk cows at the Waldo May farm.
Jim got the money to buy Edith’s wedding ring by collecting the bounty on woodchucks he found while picking corn on the May farm.
From Uncle Albert’s they moved to Sarah Butler’s farm on Eifert Road, then to the Curtis Smith farm on Onondaga Road. Jim milked cows and Edith, having graduated from Ingham County Normal in 1943, taught in various rural one-room schools including Barnes, Curtice, Ferris, and Rolfe.
In 1953 the couple purchased and moved with their young family to the former William and Minnie Rossman farm in Bunkerhill Township where they still reside. In addition to operating his newly acquired 192 acres, Jim worked 40 hours a week as a roofer in Lansing alongside his father. This continued until his son, Hank, married and the two then began a larger full time farm operation – with lots of help from Edith and their three daughters, Audrey, Nancy and Peggy.
In 1957 Edith returned to college, Michigan State University, and earned a Bachelor’s degree so she could return to teaching. She graduated in 1959 and began teaching in the Dansville School system that September. She retired from there in 1989.
The couple chose the January 15th wedding day because that was the day they met two years previously. If you ask how they met, Jim will say; “I picked her up alongside the road.” Edith will roll her eyes and explain that a mutual friend, Mable Carter, along with Wayne Oxendale was looking for her. Edith’s Dad had sent them to a nearby home where Edith was attending choir practice. As she was getting out of her car, Jim pulled up “alongside the road” and asked her if she wanted to go for a ride.
These days the couple are enjoying retirement and keeping track of their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and as of September 2018, one great-great granddaughter!
