Most of us are at least somewhat familiar with the Bible verses found in 1 Corinthians that provides us with a perfect definition of what love is. If you don’t know the verses, the very first thing they tell us is “love is patient.”
For proof of that fact, look no further than Jim and Dorothy Mahan. After growing up together in a holler off of Hwy. 92E near the Whitley-Bell county line, the two went their separate ways after Jim joined the Army in the early sixties. Now, after both married and Jim spent most of his adult life in another state, the two have re-united and will be celebrating their one-year wedding anniversary on May 18.
“We lived in a holler on Harps Creek, which is halfway between Williamsburg and Pineville,” Jim Mahan said of his and Dorothy’s younger day. “Our families knew each other, and we were boyfriend and girlfriend for about four years.”
Despite their close proximity, Jim and Dorothy did not attend the same school. As they explained it, there were two one-room school houses located in Harps Creek at that time. One went to the school located at one end of the holler, and the other went to the one located on the other end.
Fast forward to 1963. Jim, now 22-years-old, was struggling to find work. “The bully in the neighborhood got drafted,” he said. “I heard that basic training was rough, and I wanted to see him go through it, so I volunteered for the draft.”
As it turns out, the neighborhood bully failed the initial evaluation, but Jim passed and suddenly found himself asking, “What have I gotten myself into?”
“When he left, he told me, ‘I’ll be back on Thursday,’” Dorothy recalled. Little did the young couple know that Jim’s next stop would be Fort Knox before being shipped off to Fort Lewis in Washington state, and about a year later, overseas to Korea.
“I told her if she could wait for me to get back, that we would get married,” Jim said, but life had other plans for them both.
While Jim was in Korea serving as a gunner on a 155mm Howitzer, Dorothy met and married the man she would call her husband for the next 56 years. “We wrote each other up until I got married,” she said. “I thought to myself, ‘Lord, what have I done?’ I didn’t think he would ever speak to me again. I thought he would hate me for the rest of my life.”
When Jim’s service was up, he returned home and found that there wasn’t much for him to do back on Harps Creek. “I messed around for a couple of months, and then a friend of mine who was working up in Michigan came down to visit with his parents,” Jim said. “He hunted me up, told my mother to pack my clothes up, and said that I was going back with him.”
At the start of the following week, Jim began a 31-year career working for the Ford Motor Company.
While in Michigan, Jim met a young lady who, interestingly enough, had family ties to the Gatliff community of Whitley County. The two married in 1966, had a son and a daughter together, and were together for 26 years before she tragically passed of a brain aneurism while sitting in church one Sunday morning.
Jim met his second wife some time later, and as he put it, they “went on vacation together for the next 20 years.” In addition to going on a handful of cruises, the two also spent a lot of time traveling to Florida in a motorhome. Their adventures sadly came to an abrupt end, however, when a sudden and severe cancer diagnosis resulted in Jim losing a spouse for the second time.
After the death of his second wife, Jim remained single for eight years. During this time, Dorothy, who was now living in Corbin, also lost her spouse of well over fifty years. She would be single for three years after that.
Then, in 2023, Jim returned to Harps Creek to attend a homecoming event at Beech Bottom Missionary Baptist Church. While there, he bumped into Dorothy and the two began to pick up where they had left off all those years ago. After spending about two months calling each other on the phone, another meeting, this time at Jim’s sister’s funeral, ended with a hug.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Jim and Dorothy were married on May 18, 2024, on Jim’s 83rd birthday. Their three children drove in from out-of-state to be a part of the special day. Jim’s son, James, and his daughter, Rebecca, were there from Michigan, as was Dorothy’s daughter, Maxine, who came in from West Virginia.
“We are very proud of our children,” Dorothy said.
The couple now live together in Corbin, and say they have been “busy and happy” as they have spent the last year making up for lost time.
“Our plans are not God’s plans,” Dorothy said of her and Jim’s amazing story of love, loss and lessons learned. “If you or anybody else would have told me that we would have gotten back together and gotten married, I would have said that you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I always said that I will never get married again,” Dorothy added. “But… never say never.”
