CARETAN, France.-It may have been a long wait, but veteran American Harold Terens, 100, married his fiancée, Jeanne Swerlin, 96, this Saturday in northwest France, near the beaches where the Normandy Landings took place eighty years ago.
To the sound of “I will always love you”, “Ave María” and bagpipes, Terens and Swerlin said “I do” in the town of Carentan-les-Marais before dozens of guests, some in military uniform.
“I waited 96 years to find the right man and now I’m having a boda that only a queen and a king can have,” Swerlin told AFP before the ceremony.
“I feel young again,” Terens said. “It’s the best moment of my entire life.”
The veteran, dressed in a light blue suit, entered the local wedding hall to applause from his friends and family, while his great-granddaughter scattered flower petals on the floor.
Dressed in pink satin, Swerlin said “Oui!” when the mayor of the French town, Jean-Pierre Lhonneur, asked her if she wanted to take Terens as her husband.
Terens and Swerlin, who live in Boca Raton, Florida, were married after the Allies commemorated the 80th anniversary of the Normandy Landings on June 6.
A great “dreamer”
“My religion is amor“Terens told AFP, assuring that he always taught his family to “simply love.”
His son, Bill Terens, said they did not know “if he would be alive or well enough to travel” to France for D-Day commemorations, but his father assured him he was fine.
“I want to marry Jeannie,” he also said, according to his son.
“We all thought it was a little crazy, but we came back to support him, and here we are. He’s always been a dreamer, he dreams of big things, and sometimes he gets them,” Bill added.
Local officials had hoped Terens would be able to participate in a veterans’ parade, but his son said he would travel to Paris to have dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron and his American counterpart Joe Biden.
Anne-Marie Ruffier, a 66-year-old neighbor, called the wedding a “unique event.”
“It is also a way to thank this man who helped liberate France,” he declared.
Philip Taubman, Swerlin’s son-in-law, praised the “once-in-a-lifetime” celebration. “Harold was a hero and made the whole world a safer democracy, and this is simply the final celebration of his particular life.”
Terens, who was awarded France’s highest distinction, the Legion of Honor, in 2019, was honored again Thursday along with numerous other veterans during D-Day ceremonies.
“We are very honored that Mr. Terens has chosen to marry here, in Carentan, where in June 1944 the union of the Allied troops that landed on Utah and Omaha beaches took place,” said Mayor Lhonneur.
After World War II, Terens married Thelma, his first wife, with whom he had three children. When she died, he was devastated, but three years later he met Jeanne Swerlin, who had also been widowed, and they have not been separated since.
“I’m probably the luckiest person in the world,” Terens said in early May. “I have it all. One hundred years and I’m still going.”
Source: AFP
