In 1997, Lorna Wendt rejected an $8 million divorce settlement from General Electric executive Gary Wendt, saying she deserved fully half his total wealth. The case brought to question, not only the idea of equity in marriage, but the value of a good wife.
People began to wonder: Just how much is a wife worth?
Rose Klein does not know the answer to that question. She does not wonder about it even a little bit. Others say, however, that as matrimonial value goes, Mrs. Klein's stock is high.
Way high.
In an era when many marriages don't survive to double digits, Rose and George Klein of Colerain Township celebrated their 59th anniversary last week.
In laymen's terms, that is more than 21,535 dinners, 9,100 loads of laundry, 59 joint-return income tax forms and 300 family birthday cakes together.
Which is a lot to extract from a promise made when the groom was 26 and the bride a tender 21.
Which is also, frankly, a long time to be in love.
What makes the Kleins' love story even more significant -- and Rose Klein's devotion even more admirable -- is that 14 years ago, George Klein had the first in a series of strokes.
Strokes take toll
Strokes are wretched thieves. These stole a great deal from Mr. Klein, including memory, mobility and independence. After 10 weeks in a long-term care hospital, Mr. Klein came close to losing his optimism, the trait that his family and friends loved best. The hospital held out little hope for improvement. Staff members told Mrs. Klein to resign herself, ease off coming by so often. Visit, perhaps, once every two weeks.
Comments that made it clear nobody there knew the first thing about Rose Klein.
At 80, she is sweet as a sugar cookie and tough as a bull moose. She is a warrior in pearl earrings.
"I've been married to George for 45 years, I've been with him every day, and you're not going to keep me from him now," Mrs. Klein told the medical staff back in 1984.
A good, heartfelt and dramatic thing to say, but something -- in the aftermath of stroke -- that few people can make good on.
But Rose Klein took her husband George home. She took him home with a wheelchair to transport him, and a mechanized chair to help him stand up.
She took him home for seven different leg exercises every morning. She took him home for home-cooked meals, labor-intensive baths, halting conversations.
She took him home for occupational therapy, speech therapy, physical therapy, and the therapy that Rose Klein does best. The therapy of love.
"He's always been good to me through all these years," she says simply. "I can't let him down now."
"I still have him'
Rose Klein is not waiting for a miracle. She is not waiting, any longer, for anything at all. She lives without expectation, without hope, and yet remarkably, without pity or discouragement.
"I figure I still have him," she says, explaining all she needs to about how she has held up, and why.
And so, despite his strokes and her arthritis, his 10-inch height advantage and her bad back, his confusion about where things are, and her perfect understanding of where things are going, despite all that, Rose Klein will care for her George to his last day on Earth. There aren't awards for people like Rose Klein, no bonus checks, no promotions, no press conferences. Still, Rose has all the recognition she needs.
Whatever George Klein has forgotten, he remembers what a good wife is worth. And he knows his Rose is worth the best life has to give.
Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at the Enquirer, 312 Elm St. Cincinnati 45202.
RAMSEY ARCHIVE
