Love On A Day Of Honor

Some call the power of love stronger than anything in the world and that proved true today, on a day of honor.

"Many times… Many times. I’ll tell you it was pretty rough," Dewey said.

93-year-old Dewey Mullins and his wife Ethel have been married for 73 years!

"I’ve always loved him,” Ethel Mullins said. “I’ve never seen anyone else I’ve ever wanted since I got him."

It was that love that held a marriage together from across the ocean.

"November 29th, 1944, I was taken prisoner at the Battle of the Bulls. Just past Metz, France,” Dewey said.

"It was very bad and you couldn’t get much news,” Ethel said. “You’d listen every day for your news, but you didn’t have direct news from the battlefields like you have nowadays.”

It was months before Ethel heard any news. Any news at all about her loved one coming home, and then finally, she did.

"[I] took a bus home and I walked in early one evening after dark,” Dewey said. “[I] knocked on the door and [just] showed up."

"It was just wonderful,” Ethel recalled.

Friday marks POW/MIA recognition day in America and in an annual ceremony since 1979, people gathered at Lexington’s VA Hospital on Leestown Road to take a moment to honor those prisoners of war and those still missing in action.

A table with six empty place settings sat in the middle of the room. Five of those settings represented those soldiers missing from each of the five branches of military, the last setting for missing civilians.

"We lost a lot of people though,” Dewey said. “In those prisoners camps . . . those boys were nothing but bones, skin and bones.”

But they weren’t forgotten. With renewed hope after a critical year for the VA Hospital nationwide, the Lexington VA Director Emma Metcalf said their theme this year reflects their point in the crossroads, “Keeping the promise by honoring our veterans and renewing their trust.”

Back to Dewey and Ethel… Their 73rd wedding anniversary is around the corner. A love so strong that’s held them together through the good times and the bad times, Dewey says there’s only one trick to a successful marriage.

"Listen to what she says," he said as the room burst out laughing.