Most couples who have been married for a long time say their biggest adjustments to each other came within the first year or two of marriage. But for Stan and Carol Vingle, that didn’t happen until nearly 35 years later at the time of their retirement.
“We got married when I was in the Air Force stationed at Westover Air Fore Base in Massachusetts, then I transferred to the base in Dover, Delaware, where I was a loadmaster and flew missions to the Arctic, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, sometimes for 10 days at a stretch,” Stan said.
“After I left the Air Force, I worked in Columbus for WBNS-TV as a filmmaker and film editor and later for the former North American Rockwell plant in Columbus in industrial communications. Those jobs involved a lot of traveling, too.
“So all through my life, I ended up in work that demanded a lot of travel while Carol was home raising our seven children. I retired in 2000 and by that time we had been married 34 years. Now I was home and we found we were constantly on each other’s nerves. It took a while to get to know each other, having to adjust to each other, and we’re still adjusting today.”
“If I may elaborate here, it takes a lot of effort to adjust to each other’s idiosyncrasies throughout life and to work out issues while trying to ignore both the internal and external sources that may add to the difficulty,” Carol said. “The biggest thing is you have to have faith and have trust in God. In dark times, I know God is always there with you and He’s going to straighten out your path.”
Stan was born in Columbus. His family moved to West Virginia when he was 5 years old and returned to Columbus when he was 12 or 13. He graduated from the former St. Mary High School in German Village in 1954 and enlisted in the Air Force.
Carol grew up in western Massachusetts. Her father died when she was 5 and her mother died four years later. She was mainly raised by a grandmother and said some of her best memories are of the two of them picking blueberries and mushrooms. After high school, she took care of her sister’s son so the sister could work at a textile mill.
The couple, both 88 years old, met when they were 18 at a roller-skating rink in Springfield, Massachusetts. “A buddy and I saw two cute girls attempting to skate, but doing more falling than skating, giggling all the time,” Stan said. “So the two of us skated with them and eventually walked them to the bus. They introduced themselves as Carol Lewicki and Teresa Przybyla and said they were Polish.
“My mother is German and my father is Polish – my family name is actually Wegrzyn – so I said I was Polish too. They said something in Polish to me and I had no idea what it was. Carol wasn’t impressed. My buddy was entranced by Teresa. Carol wasn’t entranced by me. But we continued to double date and as my friend’s interest in Teresa declined, Carol’s and my interest in each other increased. The rest is history.”
The couple dated for about a year-and-a-half and had to do their courting by phone after Stan was transferred to Dover. “Those were the days of long-distance telephone charges and that money added up,” Stan said.
“He gave me my engagement ring at Christmastime in 1955,” said Carol, who by then had gone to work for the Buxton leather goods company. Stan was in loadmaster school at West Palm Beach, Florida, but he was able to get military flights to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, then hitchhiked to Massachusetts for the holidays.
They were married on June 23, 1956 at Christ the King Church in Ludlow, Massachusetts.
The Vingles have five living children, all in their 60s. Christina lives in Phoenix, Steve in Pickerington, Irene in Baltimore, Ohio; Edward in Reynoldsburg with his parents and Katrina in Morgan County. A daughter, Ann Marie, died in a 1981 auto accident; a son, Stanley, died in 2001 and another daughter, Carol, died in 1964 of a miscarriage. Stan and Carol also have 18 grandchildren and 30 great-grandchildren with one more on the way.
Carol had given birth to Christina and was pregnant with Ann Marie when she moved to Columbus in late 1957 while Stan was still in Dover. “I realized the Air Force life was not a good way to raise a family, at least for us, so Carol moved to Columbus while I spent my last few months in the service, then I joined her in March 1958,” he said.
“Those few months alone in Columbus were especially hard because I didn’t know anyone outside of Stan’s family,” Carol said. “At least in Dover there were the other Air Force families. That was another hard time when faith got me through.”
“At the time I was discharged and moved back to Columbus, there was a recession and I had several jobs, none of which worked out,” Stan said. “I had always liked photography and was very involved with the camera club while in high school, so I started taking photography classes while attending the Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD).
“It was a hard time financially and we were living a sparse life. I used money the Veterans Administration gave me for education to pay for groceries, we received surplus food, my mother helped provide groceries, I sold my car and I took out student loans.
“One of my instructors at CCAD was Darryl McDougal, who was director of photography at Channel 10. Through him, I got a job there in 1961. I graduated from CCAD the following year and stayed at Channel 10 for 21 years, doing a lot of documentaries, the kind of thing local TV doesn’t do much of now. I also worked as a freelancer for Diamond P Sports, a company that produced programs on drag racing, so I was constantly on the go.”
Stan left WBNS in 1982 to work for Rockwell, where he was employed until its Columbus plant closed in 1988. After that, he was unemployed for 18 months, had several short-term jobs and ultimately ended up working at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in north Columbus, retiring from there in 2000.
While Stan was working, Carol was at home with the children until they got older, then was a cook for 20 years at Reynoldsburg St. Pius X School. She followed that with 10 years at a Koger deli, also retiring in 2000.
The couple have attended St. Pius Church for more than 60 years. Health issues have kept Carol from attending church recently and kept the couple from being part of the diocesan Jubilee of Anniversaries earlier this month at Columbus St. Joseph Cathedral.
Stan was an adult leader in the parish’s boy Scouting program for 10 years. Both also are members of the Columbus Polish American Club, with Stan serving as president for several years and as a trustee. Their work with the club included staffing a booth at an annual United Nations festival in the former Franklin County Veterans Memorial and helping organize dances and other celebrations.
Stan said he has been in 19 or 20 countries and Carol has been with him on post-retirement trips to the Grand Canyon, Alaska, Poland, Germany and elsewhere. If their health permits, they would like to go back to Poland and to Ukraine, where Carol has cousins. “I’ve become deeply engrossed in genealogy and going back there would help a great deal in that aspect,” Stan said.
After talking about the couple’s “bucket list,” Stan said he had one more story to share. “I contracted COVID in March 2020 and went to the emergency room at Mount Carmel East Hospital, where I was one of its first COVID patients.
“It turned out I also had double pneumonia,” he said. “I was given as much oxygen as I could handle and eventually was put on a ventilator. On my second day there, a priest came to hear my confession. The room was dark, he was wearing a ‘moon suit’ for protection and I had to ask him a couple of times if he was a priest to be reassured. It was a Father Stephen, but I don’t remember his last name.
“I started confessing all my sins, crying and gasping for breath. Father stopped me and told me, ‘God doesn’t keep a scorecard. He’s not vengeful. God wants you to accept His love and mercy.’
“As he was saying this, I had a vision. I was in a lagoon and a huge, warm, gentle wave came washing over me, cleansing my soul and wiping away my sins. I then noticed a hooded figure dressed in black on my left, then turned to my right and saw a large paten with a sacred Host. I recognized that as Christ absolving me. Then I heard Father’s voice leading the prayer of absolution.
“I knew I was close to death, but gradually started getting better after that. The days went on and I was able to leave the hospital after 22 days.
“I didn’t realize that I had a whole prayer circle constantly praying for me, including my relatives in Poland. I later found out I had a Mass celebrated for me on Easter Saturday in the Salesian seminary in Krakow. That especially moved me,” he said.
“I have to believe that God brought me back for a purpose, that both of us still have His work to do. That experience made me believe more strongly than ever in the power of prayer. I don’t believe some things are the result of just happenstance and luck. God is always there in His own way, paving the way for us, and it’s up to us to have faith that He’s looking out for us.”