Maze!. Toy!

Best Buddies

Ruth and
Max Appel:
"buddies"
after all
these years.

Ruth and Max Appel are coming upon their 50th year of marriage.
Their love for each other is as strong as ever.

JULIE EDGAR

News Editor

uth Davis didn't know much
about the handsome boy at
e wiener roast when she
fell for him.
Floating home on a cloud that night,
she woke her parents to tell them she
had found the man she was going to
marry.
Alas, Max Appel didn't feel the same
way, at least initially. He had other
things on his mind. Just returned from
the war, where he had been stationed as
a soldier in the Philippines, he was pon-
dering his future, wondering if he
should abandon a career in pharmacy
and enter dental school.
"I just came back from service and I
was very unsettled, and when you're
unsettled you don't think about love,
marriage or future commitments. I did
notice she was very, very pretty," Max
said.
Ruth, in the meantime, waited by
the phone.
"I didn't feel like going out with any-
body else. For a month he didn't call

6/19
1998

52

and I was just
mile apart. Both
heartbroken," she said.
our dads had little gro-
Then they had their second, most
cery stores that never made a living.
fateful encounter. Ruth was waiting for
They used to give credit and they'd pay
a bus at the corner of Jefferson
you at the end. Or when they got
and Woodward Avenues when the
money they would get drunk and
object of her crush stopped to give Ruth and not be able to pay. We were both
M ax
her a ride.
very poor," Ruth said.
App
el 50
What they learned that day is
Two years later, on July 4,
years ago.
that their backgrounds were
1948, the pair wed in Ruth's
exactly" the same, except they
mother's house. Then they went
lived three blocks apart in Windsor and
up north for three weeks, ending up
attended different schools.
on Mackinac Island.
"Both our fathers ran grocery stores a
"It was all new to us, so it was very

exciting. I never learned to ride a bike
and we rented bikes and I biked
around the island. I've never ridden a<
bike since then," Ruth laughed.
Fortunately, the couple, who live
in their first home in Oak Park,
found other mutual interests: swim-
ming, hiking, dancing, the Detroit
Symphony Orchestra, attending
retreats with the Institute for Retired
Professionals and the Elderhostel pro-
gram and lectures through the Adult
Learning Institute at OCC, and dot—,
ing on their eight grandsons. They
are always on the move, said Max,
who retired from his dental practice
10 years ago.
"We're just really good buddies. We
like all the same things," Ruth said,
describing her husband as "just a
doll."
Max, in turn, called Ruth "gor- r_
geous," a woman he loves for her
kindness and "ability to laugh at just
about everything."
"Right now we're like two peas in a
pod. It's developed over the years. We
have really deep feeling for each
other," he said. ❑

