Finding Fonda: Seventy Years of Love, Life, and Laughter - Hardcover

by Ritchey M. Marbury (Author)

Step into a story that will make you laugh, move you to tears, and inspire you to love more deeply. Finding Fondais the ultimate proof that happily ever after is not just a fairy tale-it is a choice you make every single day.

A heartwarming, true-life memoir celebrating an extraordinary romance that proves true love can endure-and thrive-for a lifetime.

If you are looking for a book about mostly tragic happenings, this is not the book for you. But if you want to read true experiences of profound love, unwavering faith, and abundant laughter, read on. Finding Fonda invites you to walk alongside my childhood sweetheart, Fonda, and me as we navigate the beautiful, humorous, and sometimes heartbreaking journey of our 63-year marriage and our 70 years together.

A Partnership Built on Patience From our earliest days, we tackled life as an unbreakable team. When I was enduring grueling basic military training, Fonda woke up early to mend my uniforms, cook my meals, and "spit shine" my combat boots. Later, when I was completing my master's thesis, she stayed up from midnight to 6:00 a.m. typing more than 3,000 pages for me on a manual typewriter. In recognition of her selfless dedication, she actually received a degree from Georgia Tech: an MPHE, or "Mistress of Patience in Husband Engineering".

Adventures and Memories Our life has never been short on adventure. When we were young and had very little money, we camped in a small tent to attend the New York and Montreal World's Fairs. As we grew older, the adventures only grew bolder. In our mid-sixties, we survived freezing rain and tried to learn to start fires without matches during a rugged wilderness therapy program in the Arizona desert. To celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary, we traveled from Florida all the way to Alaska, where we rode a UTV through the wilderness and watched ancient glaciers slide into the sea. Together, we have visited all 50 states.

Faith, Hardship, and Resilience A lasting marriage is built on more than just fun, and together, we have weathered life's heaviest storms. We found a shared spiritual path, joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and eventually serving a three-year mission together in Idaho. Our commitment to serving others earned me the nickname "disaster man" from Fonda, as we consistently volunteered side-by-side to clear debris and bring hope to victims of Hurricane Andrew, Hurricane Katrina, and multiple devastating tornadoes.

When Fonda was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, we refused to give up. Together, we adopted Dr. Roy Swank's highly restrictive, low-fat diet, which allowed Fonda to live virtually symptom-free for over thirty-five years. We leaned on each other through broken hips, my aggressive battles with bladder cancer, and the ultimate heartbreak of losing our beloved daughter, Mitzi, to breast cancer. Through every hospital stay and every tear, we never doubted our love.

The Seven Keys to a Happy Marriage Drawing on seven decades of partnership, this book concludes with the core principles that kept our bond unbreakable: profound patience, prioritizing date nights, shared faith, keeping humor alive, and facing hardships as a united team.