GROVES — Back in 1942 Jimmie Brewer, a Merchant Marine riding a seagoing tug, was told by his captain about a good-looking blond girl.

“He said, ‘You ought to meet her,’ and you do what your captain says,” Jimmie Brewer said. “We dated for about a year then got married.”

On Wednesday, June 29, Jimmie and Jennie Brewer celebrated their 73^rd wedding anniversary at their Groves home with family and friends.

The couple, both 95, complement each other answering questions almost in unison and finishing each other’s sentences at times. One would start a sentence then look over to the other for confirmation on a particular year or event.

Jennie Brewer grew up on a farm in Fred, Texas, while Jimmie Brewer was born and raised in Lawrenceburg, Tenn.

Jennie was working in an office at Texaco Refinery and had played on the company basketball team in the early 1940s. The team earned the title of city champs, daughter Barbara “BJ” Entrekin said.

Jimmyie had attended radio school at Port Arthur College and was a radio operator during World War II.

“He took messages to his captain that were in Morse code,” Entrekin said, saying that one message in particular was chilling. “The message was ‘there are German subs in the Galveston Bay.’ Dad said ‘repeat.’ If he had to take the message to the captain, he had to get it right.”

The couple were married in Port Arthur and honeymooned in Galveston. They offered a glimpse into their lives with a trip down memory lane.

“That’s (Galveston) where I learned how to drive a car. It was on that main road,” Jennie Brewer said. “It was his idea. I did OK I guess, I didn’t have a wreck.”

Jennie quit her job at the refinery and after the war helped her husband get a job in an office there. He retired in 1981.

The couple have their separate hobbies. Jennie gardened and is an accomplished landscape painter; Jimmie is an inventor of sorts.

“He invented surround sound before it was popular,” their daughter Entrekin said. “He had speakers with wires going through the walls.”

A tinkerer, Jimmie also rigged up a light that would come on when the bathroom door closed and helped a brother who is hard of hearing by creating a way for a lamp to come on when the phone or doorbell rang.

“They are both exceptional in my eyes,” she said.

The Brewers have two daughters, Entrenkin and Julie Brewer, as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren and some “grand dogs.”

The couple, who have been together for more than seven decades, listed reasons for why they were initially drawn to each other — Jennie Brewer felt he’d be a person to take care of her, she said.

“We were both suited to each other and decided to make it permanent,” the husband said. “I guess we did.”

The key to staying married was explained just as easily — compromise.

“You take a little and give a little,” Jennie Brewer said.

Her husband said they’d never had any real serious differences, and if they did, they were settled amicably.

The Brewers got a lot of emails and well wishes for their anniversary and were called an inspiration.

Mary Meaux: 409-721-2429

Twitter: @MaryMeauxPANews