After 71 years together, couple’s love continues to grow

What could possibly cause an 80-something man to get an earring?

In the case of Perry “Bones” Cisco, also known by some as the Cisco Kid, it was his wife, Mary.

They were at a shopping mall in Florida about seven years ago when they saw an ear-piercing shop.

“She said, ‘You get in there and get an earring,’ ” Perry Cisco recalled.

So he did.

Perry Cisco, 89, who on Saturday celebrated his 71st anniversary with Mary, 87, still wears a gold-colored earring in his left ear.

The celebration won’t be elaborate for the Adrian couple. “I’m just coming over (to Lynwood Manor) and spending time with her,” he said.

Mary Cisco, who has dementia, moved out of the home they shared and into the nursing home about a year ago.

As he talked, Perry Cisco sat in a chair next to his wife’s wheelchair, his arm wrapped around her. Sometimes he grabbed her right hand and held it tight.

“Just love, that’s it,” she said of how they’ve stayed together for so long.

Perry and Mary both grew up in the Hudson area.

A friend introduced the teenagers at an outdoor movie in the summer of 1937. They can’t remember what movie was showing.

“I can remember her having a yellow dress, though,” Perry Cisco said.

In the spring of 1938, he asked her out. “I don’t know,” he said when asked what took him so long.

“I went to her home and asked her for a date — asked her dad for a date — and that fall we got married,” he said.

He was 18 and she was 16. His parents were the only witnesses at a ceremony performed by a justice of the peace in Angola, Ind.

“I fell in love with him right away,” Mary Cisco said.

Why? “Well, muscles, and he answered my prayers.”

After they got married, Perry Cisco worked on the Wabash Railroad from Britton to Milan. It was hard labor: “Ripping out ties and putting in new ones,” he said.

Later, he worked on a farm and eventually became a carpenter in the 1950s, working for Tecumseh Homes.

Mary Cisco was a homemaker.

“And she was a wonderful piano player,” her husband said proudly. “She played by ear. And she could cook ... And she was a wonderful mother. She brought that little boy up like he ought to be brought up.”

Their only child, Daniel, is deceased.

The couple lived in California, Texas and Florida.

“When she started showing signs of not feeling well, I decided we’d better come back here,” Perry Cisco said.

He comes to visit his wife every morning and then returns with dinner in the late afternoon.

“I bring her veggies, ice cream and cookies and a banana at night,” he said.

Perry Cisco, a slim man with large hands and a handlebar mustache, has health problems of his own.

“I’m patched up,” he said. “I’ve got a pacemaker and I had bypass and I have artificial knees.”

Both Ciscos are artistically inclined.

Perry is proud of his wife’s oil paintings.

“Sure,” she quips when asked if she’s an artist. “I draw flies.”

Her husband is a musician who plays the bones.

Bones are ebony wooden sticks. Bones players put a set of the sticks between their fingers on each hand and click the sticks together to play music. At one time, bones players literally used animal bones.

Perry Cisco often plays the bones in area nursing homes. He said he hasn’t encountered a couple that’s been together as long as them.

Earlier this week, “Bones” pulled out his instruments at Lynwood Manor to give a demonstration.

As Perry Cisco’s bones clicked together, his biggest fan closed her eyes and made rhythmic motions with her right hand.

“I can’t explain how much we love each other,” Perry Cisco said. “It seems to have grown over the years.”

Daily Telegram