Jerry Neltner attended a wedding with a friend in 1956; unbeknownst to him, his future wife of 64 years, Laverne Hemmerle, was also in attendance.
Neltner said he asked her for her number at the wedding, “and she gave it to me,” he told LINK nky on the date of the couple’s 64th wedding anniversary.
He recalls waiting two weeks before calling her. The couple officially started dating in December 1956. Neltner went on to join the Army the following year and was sent to Germany in January 1958.
Upon his arrival back in the states, Neltner and Hemmerle married on Jan. 3, 1959, when both were 19 years old. Today at 83, their wedding photo resides in a glass case outside Laverne Neltner’s room at Carmel Manor in Fort Thomas, where she is cared for due to her stage seven Alzheimer’s.
Stage seven is the final stage of Alzheimer’s and requires extensive assistance with daily care.
Even so, Jerry said Laverne is still familiar with who he is.
“She said something to Jeanie (a nurse who works at Carmel Manor) this morning. Jeanie said, ‘so it’s your anniversary.’ And she said, ‘oh yeah, he’s been a great husband,'” Jerry said, smiling.
Two weeks after their wedding in 1959, Jerry was sent back to Germany, but this time Laverne got to go with him. He grins, remembering their trouble in New York before the trip, running around trying to get his wife’s passport changed to have her married name on it.
“We couldn’t fly together; I was on a military flight,” Jerry said. “And she was only 19 and had never flown before. She had a stop in Amsterdam, and she was a nervous wreck.”
They spent their first 11 months as a married couple living in Germany together. A place they would eventually go back to visit three more times.
The couple’s European travels expanded to Italy, which they also visited three times. Jerry said they would see Laverne’s two sisters, who were Notre Dame nuns.
While in Germany, Jerry said his wife had a tumor pregnancy, the start of an arduous road trying to conceive. He said they had one child upon returning home to the U.S., followed by three miscarriages.
“When she lost the first one, the doctor said I don’t know what happened. It could never happen again. Well, six months later, she lost the second one,” Jerry said. “She was going out of her mind. This was all in 13 months.”
After losing her third child, Jerry said he sat in a doctor’s office with his wife with a patch on his eye. The doctor questioned him about it, and he told him about his symptoms.
“The doctor said that’s it. It’s either your teeth, your gallbladder, or diabetes. So, I had all my teeth pulled, and we had six more kids,” Jerry said.
They have four girls and three boys, ranging in age from 62 to 44. He can’t help but gush about his children being college graduates and their successes in life with careers in physical therapy, nursing, computer programming, and a Senior Vice President at Fifth Third.
Regarding raising intelligent children with good heads on their shoulders, Jerry gives his wife all the credit, “She did a good job; I was working all the time,” he said.
Laverne was a stay-at-home mom in Campbell County, while Jerry spent 38 years as a truck driver, with tasks like hauling Miller Light beer out of Milwaukee.
Three years before Jerry retired, Laverne went to work in the Bishop Brossart High School cafeteria, where all their kids attended school.
In July of 2014, Jerry said his wife’s Alzheimer’s symptoms began.
“She was pretty good until October 2021,” he said. “I noticed a decline.”
He said the family did their best to take care of Laverne at home but it became too much with having to call two people for things like helping her shower. The following May, she went into hospice. The same month she moved into Carmel Manor to be taken care of 24/7.
“She’s to the point where she doesn’t hardly talk anymore; you have to feed her and try and get her to eat,” Jerry said. “She’s losing weight. She’s lost 25 pounds since she came in here. She probably sleeps 20 hours a day.”
He said that when she moved into Carmel Manor, she could still walk some but has since declined there as well.
Two weeks into Laverne’s stay at the care facility, she had to have a watch service for 10 hours every night because she fell out of bed multiple times, causing bruising to her face. At one point, he said he had to spend $18,000 a month for her care—$12,000 for her stay and $6,000 for the night service.
Jerry said she no longer has those services because she is not able to get out of bed on her own.
Even with her communicating less and sleeping long hours of the day, Jerry makes it a point to visit his wife from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily.
He’s not the only one. Between the couple’s seven children, 20 grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren (with four on the way), there is never a lack of love filling the room.
You can see the love, too, with a giant rose balloon in the corner of Laverne’s room and a big banner that reads, “Celebrating 64 years, Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad.”
“The best part about it is every one of them gets along,” Jerry said of his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
He recalls last holiday season when he took his wife home for the first time since beginning her stay at Carmel Manor. He said his kids wanted to take her home for Christmas, and he felt reluctant because he hadn’t mentioned “home” to Laverne since she moved in. But, he said, she was OK with the visit.
“We got to take Laverne home Thanksgiving for four hours, and Christmas, we got to take her home for four hours,” Jerry said. “We had 49 of us over at the house for dinner on Christmas.”
Boasting about his family as a proud father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, Jerry pulls out a laminated photo of his family at his granddaughter’s wedding that he carries in his wallet. It’s the same photo his wife has in a frame in the glass case that holds their wedding photo outside her room.
Contact the Alzheimer’s Association at (800) 272-3900 or at alz.org.
