Benjamin and Madeline Archuleta recognized as longest-married couple in diocese
SALT LAKE CITY — He was a lumberjack when they met at a dance in a small Colorado town just after the Great Depression; she was a farm girl. He caught her eye on the dance floor, so she asked his cousin about him. The cousin introduced them, and they danced twice, but not a third time, because if he’d asked her again her father would have taken the family home.
Despite Madeline’s over-protective father, she and Benjamin Archuleta were able to meet: his sister and her brother married, so the young people got together at their siblings’ place. Nevertheless, they didn’t have her father’s approval. When Benjamin visited Madeline just before shipping out to basic training after being drafted into the Army for World War II, her father met him at the fence and asked, “Hey, Mister, what business do you have here?”
However, when Benjamin returned after two years – having served in the Philippines, first in the infantry and then as a truck driver in a quartermaster’s company – Madeline’s father grudgingly gave his permission and allowed Benjamin to ask Madeline to marry him.
“That was the first time we got to be together alone,” he said.
On Feb. 10, 1947, the couple entered the Catholic church in Durango, Colo., despite an overnight snowstorm that had dumped three feet of snow on the ground and kept some of the guests from attending.
Walking into the church, Benjamin kept saying, “‘If you want to change your mind, you can now.’ He kept saying that, and I said, ‘Do you want to change your mind?’ and oh, no he didn’t,” Madeline said.
Rather than a honeymoon, the couple spent their money on building a log cabin in the town of Bayfield, near Durango, Colo. After working during the day, they would go to their land and mix cement for the base. A friend gave them a barrel of used nails, which Madeline straightened so Benjamin could use them.
“We didn’t have time to argue,” Madeline said of their early life. “And we came to the point that if we argued in the house, he would go out and I’d stay in the house, and he’d go out there for a while and come back and everything was OK.”
That strategy continues even today, Benjamin said.
“I’ll tell you, you’ll have some disagreements, and we still do,” he said, “but I’d walk out and cool off and come back and says, ‘Is it over with?’ ‘Yeah.’ We forgot about it.”
The couple lived in Bayfield for several years; their three oldest children were born in the house they built. Madeline had no complications with any of the pregnancies or the births, and “that’s a lot to thank God for,” she said. Her father had insisted that the family pray together and attend Mass on Sunday, even though they had to walk six miles to the church, so she pushed Benjamin to practice the faith. Praying together helped strengthen their marriage, she said.
Once, early in their marriage, he commented that they didn’t have much to talk about, and he teased her that she could tell him about all the boyfriends she had when she was young, “and I got her all stirred up, and she says, ‘Yeah, and we could say the rosary too, but we don’t,’ so now we say the rosary on Tuesday nights and Friday nights,” he said.
Work brought them to Utah, where Madeline was employed at Holy Cross Hospital and then as a housekeeper for the Most Rev. Joseph L. Federal, the sixth Bishop of Salt Lake.
“He was so kind and so nice,” she said, laughing as she told of the bishop coming in one morning singing “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” because the roof had leaked during the night and dripped on him.
Benjamin first worked in an assembly plant, then went to Seattle to work in construction while Madeline stayed home with the children, raising them and supplementing their table with produce from the garden, chicken from the hens she tended and pork from the hog they raised.
Family matters brought Benjamin back to Utah, where he worked at Chevron Oil, and then at the veteran’s hospital. He retired in 1990. The couple attended Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, where Benjamin organized the crews that worked the weekly Bingo and Madeline sang in the choir. They now attend St. Joseph the Worker Parish.
Along the way they passed on their values to their children, said Priscilla Quintana, their second-oldest child.
“Dad always said ‘You must be honest, you must be faithful, you must put your best foot forward. Always do the best that you can with everything, to the best of your ability,” Priscilla said.
The family would pray together, especially the rosary during Lent, she said, and she sees her parents’ marriage as a model. “Their unity, their togetherness was how I felt it should always be anyway,” she said.
The couple has a prayer altar in their bedroom with two statues from the Cathedral of the Madeleine – gifts from Bishop Federal – a statue from Benjamin’s grandfather and a 100-year-old picture of the Holy Family that came across the Plains with his family in a covered wagon.
“That was the first Christmas scene I ever saw,” he said.
They attribute their long marriage to forgiveness, love and keeping busy.
“Everybody’s going to have a disagreement, but don’t hold a grudge,” Benjamin said, adding that people must forgive if they want to be forgiven.
Also, he said, “Don’t forget God, because if you forget God you lose it all.”
They keep busy so they don’t have time to get bored and start feeling sorry for themselves and quarreling, she said. Also, “We loved each other when we started,” she said.
Priscilla summarized her parents’ marriage in one sentence: “They worked well together in providing for their family, and their faith kept them together,” she said.
The Archuletas were recognized by Bishop Oscar A. Solis at a Feb. 17 dinner that was held in conjunction with the diocesan marriage enrichment retreat that was sponsored by the Office of Family Life.
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