While you may know John and Betty Stafford for their involvement in countless agricultural, community and sports organizations, we thought we’d treat you, dear readers, to their love story, in honour of Valentine’s Day this month.

John Stafford is the sixth generation of Staffords on a 100-acre farm just north of Wroxeter. He lived his entire life there, save for a few short weeks when he was 15 years old and joined an asparagus picking crew near Harrow in 1949. He was able to skip his June exams at the Wingham-Wroxeter Continuation School that year in time to get peak season, picking 10-12 hours a day, for five cents a basket, likely averaging $12 on a good week.

Betty was only a few months older and was attending Walkerville Collegiate in Windsor that year. She was a city girl and had to write her exams before she eagerly left home for her first real job. She went 33 miles down the road, staying in a barracks with fellow teenaged girls and picking beans, peaches and tomatoes in the Ontario Farm Service Force as a Farmerette in the summer of 1949. She had some experience with fruits and vegetables from her mother’s Victory Garden in the city. 

A dance had been arranged at the girls’ barracks one evening to welcome a new busload of girls that never did end up arriving, recalls Betty. John remembers hitchhiking the 30 miles to the dance with his friends. It was his friend, Stanley Zagrodney, from Kapuskasing, that first danced with Betty that night, but when Betty asked for an introduction to John, he complied. John and Betty danced together the rest of the evening.

One week later, a letter arrived at the barracks for Betty.

“It was a really juicy letter,” is all Betty would say, with a wink, and she read it, giggling with her friends in the barracks. John smiles and admitted that he had help from his friends in spicing up the letter. 

Betty wrote back a not-as-juicy response and thus began their weekly letters back and forth. They did see each other once more that summer on a double-date to an amusement park on the island near Amherstburg. John went back to the farm and back to school that fall. Betty continued with her studies and found work at a tourist lodge near the beach in Port Elgin the next summer.
When she next saw John, he had brought along his mother, stepfather and the whole family for a beach day. His mother had invited Betty to the farm, and she took the bus to Wingham to visit them later that summer. 

It was another few years of weekly letters, on scraps of paper that they could find, back when stamps were two cents. After she finished school, she had been working at the Hiram Walker’s distillery, and when she was laid off in January 1953, she came to the farm, where she learned about farm life and also learned to cook. After years of living with food stamp rations, it was a treat to get milk, eggs and meat from the farm. 

Nine years and a thousand letters later, John and Betty were married on June 7, 1958.  

In case you’re wondering, the couple burned all their letters, even the “juicy” one, at the request of John’s mother, in order to protect some family secrets. 

John’s mother passed away in 1959, without getting to meet any of her grandchildren. Leslie was born later in 1959, Lori in 1960, and William 1961; the “three musty steers” as John called them. They were followed by Robert in 1965. That’s when John says they figured out what was causing all the children. They had one more, Cheryl, in 1967, who they called their Centennial project. 
Back in 1949, little did they know that their first steps away from home would lead to the adventure of their lifetime. The couple have taken their motorhome to explore North America, and have seen Europe, Southern Africa, China, South America. And they keep in touch with Stanley Zagrodney. 

John (also nicknamed Jack) worked closely with the OFA and when his sons started taking on more farmwork, John was able to become active on several more boards. As for Betty, she became the first female Director of the Huron Federation of Agriculture in 1970. Their son Willy is now the seventh generation on the farm. 

John and Betty now have 12 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren. John gestures to all their photographs along the mantle, calling them his “bug collection,” with a smile.  

As this marks 75 years of their love story, they say the secret is patience, a lot of give-and-take, and a common love of adventure. Likely a lot of laughter as well. Their next trip is Morocco this May with their two daughters and sons-in-law. ◊