Social distancing is key during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it doesn’t prevent a newly discovered love — and marriage — from happening as a local couple found out.
Major Nancy Townsend planned a late November 2019 kickoff for the Athol Salvation Army’s Christmas Kettle Drive and asked the lead organization if it could put out a call for some musicians to play at it.
Townsend, 66, brought her E-flat alto horn that day, and Herb Thomas, 78, of Leominster, who had retired from the Salvation Army several years before but was still involved in many of its activities, arrived with his baritone horn. The two chatted for a few minutes and went on to play and celebrate with everyone else.
In January, the Salvation Army invited both and others who had participated to a spiritual retreat in Sturbridge. They both accepted, not knowing the other had been invited.
“I went early to breakfast and when I walked in, Nancy was sitting with another woman, and I walked over and asked if I could sit with them,” Thomas said. “Again we chatted, but didn’t see a lot of each other that weekend. As we were all heading home, I walked over to say “good-bye” to Nancy and suggested we maybe do lunch sometime.”
A widower, Thomas’ wife had died the February before, so he was simply thinking two new friends could get together to talk. But, he didn’t call Townsend until later in February.
“I felt very uncomfortable ‘dating’ too soon,” he said. “I wasn’t really even thinking of it as a date, but I was also thinking about my wife.”
While Townsend had been widowed for five years, she had no intention of dating. She missed the “coupleness” and conversation with a man, but that was about it.
“He was someone nice to talk with, so I thought it would be nice to have a male friend,” she said.
In late February, they met for lunch at 110 Grill in Athol and had a nice time. So, they planned another lunch and then another.
Then the pandemic hit the area. They had spent enjoyable lunches together, stopped at each other’s apartments once for cookies and coffee and had planned more get-togethers, never dreaming those plans would be stopped in their tracks.
“I know it was fast, but we were starting to having feelings for each other,” Townsend said.
Their conversations had gotten more personal and in early-to mid-March, Thomas asked Townsend if she had every thought about marrying again.
“I told him I liked what we had, and if it turned into more, so be it,” she said. “But at that moment, we became a couple, an item. We weren’t just friends having lunch anymore.”
It was Friday the 13th of March when they had dinner and decided their relationship had taken a turn, but it was also the day the state started closing things down because of the pandemic, and was asking people to stay home.
“That following Monday we went to New Hampshire, which hadn’t yet closed down, and had lunch together,” she said. “They big question for us was: ‘How do we do this during a pandemic?’”
Townsend stayed in Athol and Thomas in Leominster.The two ended up spending a lot of time on FaceTime and the phone.
“Sometimes we’d just sit and smile at each other over the internet,” Thomas said. “But there weren’t any distractions like couples typically have — we weren’t going to the movies or doing things that took up time but didn’t allow us to truly get to know each other. We just talked and talked and learned everything about each other.”
The week before Easter, the Town of Athol was working on a sewer line when sewage started to back up in Townsend’s home, so she couldn’t stay there. The Salvation Army sent her to Sharon to its summer camp, saying she could stay there until her place was ready to be moved back into.
“I couldn’t get to anywhere else because of COVID-19, and I wasn’t going to expose Herb,” she said. “But I did call him and ask if he wanted to have Easter dinner at the camp. I knew we could do it outside with masks and social distancing.
“I was getting depressed,” she said. “I couldn’t see Herb in person, I couldn’t pastor at the Salvation Army. I just drove back and forth from Sharon to Athol every day because I had to keep serving. The bright spot of each day was talking to him.”
Thomas arrived at camp to have Easter dinner, and then, his family followed.
“He surprised me with his family,” she said. “By that time we had talked about marriage, knew it was what we wanted to do eventually, so he thought I should get to know his children and grandchildren. But, that was going to be tricky during a pandemic.”
The children who couldn’t make it to the camp that day met Townsend online the next week. Shortly after that, Townsend invited him again for dinner and the family showed up, her children, as well. He asked her to take a walk, sat her on a bench and dropped to one knee.
“He wanted to propose in front of our families,” she said. “They all knew all about it. I had no idea.”
Townsend, who eventually returned to Athol, said at first they thought about having intimate ceremony at the courthouse or something because they didn’t want to expose anyone to the virus. Instead, they decided to invite the people they would have invited in normal times and let them decide whether to come.
“Some people couldn’t travel, or didn’t want to,” she said. “Others didn’t want to expose themselves to anything, so declined. We understood.”
The couple knew about an outdoor butterfly garden in Philadelphia, Penn., and that’s where they decided they wanted to be married.
“It was going to be outdoors with social distancing and masks and all the precautions — we even had people take their temperatures before arriving,” she said. “It was a beautiful park with a beautiful playground, so the grandkids could play. We waited until September, when things were opening back up again and people could move around a little more freely.”
Townsend and Thomas didn’t want to forget anything about the day, so some wedding photos were taken with and some without masks. Her 94-year-old mother couldn’t join them because no one wanted to take any chances, so they called her during the ceremony so she could offer a blessing while on speaker.
“It was what it was at the time,” Townsend said. “We had it catered and they served brunch so that people weren’t standing over the food. We did all that we could to keep it safe.”
After the wedding, the couple took a trip along Route 66.
“I had decided that the year I turned 66, I was going to travel Route 66,” Townsend said. “It was nice to do it with someone I love. I never dreamed that would happen.”
Townsend has changed her name to Townsend-Thomas. She said she kept “Townsend” because that’s how she’s known in throughout the Salvation Army. She said she never thought she’d fall in love again this late in the game, and certainly never thought it would happen during a worldwide pandemic.
She said what was amazing – and she doesn’t know if it would have happened without a pandemic looming – was that they spent so much time talking because that’s all they could do. She said the relationship moved quickly, but seamlessly and with no awkwardness, probably because of all the talk.
“In one way, it was very wonderful,” Thomas said. “In another way, it was very strange. But in the end, I got to marry a wonderful, lovely, marvelous lady. We just had to get here in a very restricted way.”
The couple said what really got them through was their flexibility and determination to make the best of a horrible situation.
“You just have to weigh what’s important in times like these,” she said. “We felt we had no time to waste, so we didn’t. We weren’t going to let a pandemic get in our way.”
The couple now lives in Athol with his teacup Chihuahua Bella and her Lhasa Apso Hudson.They still take the precautions they need to take through the pandemic, but said now they can smile at each other from across the table and hold hands while they’re doing it.
“This was all so serendipitous,” Thomas said. “What were the chances?”
Reach Anita Fritz at 413-772-9591 or afritz@recorder.com.