It was a match made not in heaven, but in the bean and berry fields outside of Salem.
Morrell Crary and Jeannie Scales met while picking produce on the farms surrounding their hometown, a common summer job for youths hoping to make a little spending money in the idyllic Eisenhower era of 1950s Oregon.
“That’s how we met, in the sixth or seventh grade,” the since-remarried Jeannie Williams recalled recently in describing her first encounter with the friendly, gregarious kid from the northeast part of town. “In the bean fields.”
Morrell would subsequently attend Serra High School and Jeanne would go to North Salem, but they stayed in touch through mutual friends, an easy thing to do back when Salem was a small, tight-knit community with only three high schools.