NEWBERG, Ore. — Seventy-five years ago, Tom and Pat Hanthorn made a decision that would define the rest of their lives together: whatever came next, they’d do it side by side.
That approach has carried them through a Navy deployment, a 40-acre farm, three children, a cross-border RV caravan, and decades of Arizona winters — and it’s still the answer their daughter gives when asked what kept the marriage going this long.
“For them, doing things together” was what made it work, said Heidi Cuddeford, the couple’s daughter. “I guess the saying holds true for them — those that play together, stay together.”
Tom, now 94, and Pat, 93, met as students at Milwaukie High School in Milwaukie, Ore. They married on May 13, 1951 — Pat was 18 and still a senior in high school, and Tom was 19 and already serving in the Navy. Not long after the wedding, Tom shipped out to Guam, and the newlyweds spent the early part of their marriage apart before he completed his service.
Once Tom returned home for good, the Hanthorns settled into the working rhythm that would carry them for decades. Tom took a job as a long-haul semi-truck driver, hauling freight for Haley’s Canned Foods in Hillsboro and later for Diamond Cabinets in Portland — work that kept him on the road for stretches at a time. Pat held a few office jobs early on, but her main job soon became raising the couple’s three children: Tim, born in 1956; Tracy, born in 1960, who died in 1996; and Heidi, born in 1964.
Family life centered on a 40-acre mini farm, where the Hanthorns took on nearly everything as a joint project — gardening, caring for the property, and showing horses among them. When retirement finally arrived, they didn’t slow down so much as redirect their energy: the couple hitched up an RV and joined caravan trips down into Mexico, and for years they became seasonal Arizona snowbirds, trading the Willamette Valley’s wet winters for desert sun.
These days, Tom and Pat live in Newberg on 2.5 acres — a smaller footprint than the farm, but still enough ground to keep two people who’ve never been inclined to sit still moving through their days together.
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