71 years and going strong

Aug. 10--CAROLINA TRACE -- When Mark Gilles was 23 he lived out a classic rom-com cliche -- he saw a pretty girl across a crowded room and fell in love. It was 1943, and Gilles was attending Air Force Flight School in Blythe, California.

"They had a big deal going at the Hollywood Palladium, with band leaders and movie stars. I heard about it in the Los Angeles paper and I decided that I'd go there," he recalled. "On the edge of the dance floor there was a raised platform with four young ladies and an older well-dressed gentlemen, and I thought to myself, 'I got to go check that out.' I went over and introduced myself and when I got there I thought [June] was the best one."

"I'm so glad I went and I'm so glad he went," said Helen Gilles, who goes by her middle name, June. "I just smiled. Really I think he was looking at my girlfriend, but he got a little closer and looked at me."

But Gilles insists he was looking at June all along and said it was not only her beauty, but also her maturity that attracted him.

"She seemed very, very adult and grown up for her age. I was about three years older than the average cadet so I was a grown up," he said.

"I told him I was 18, but I was only 17," admitted June, who was just out of high school at the time.

Their romance blossomed from there. After he graduated from flight school, the pair became engaged before Mark was stationed in England to fight in World War II.

"I kind of wanted to be a fighter pilot, but they put me in B-17s, which are also called a Flying Fortress," Gilles said, who was in the Eighth Air Force. "When the 95th bomb group came over in '43 and started bombing in the summer of '43 almost nobody made it out, just a small percent actually survived. We had deals where we lost 60 B-17s in one mission, with 10 people in them -- that's the way it was."

Gilles flew more than 30 missions "mainly over Germany," during his time in Europe, including bombing missions on D-Day. June attributes his unlikely survival to his aircraft maintenance background.

"I think the fact that [he] did have the maintenance background with [his] pilot background saved his life in England," she said. "Because he could make decisions and he knew how things were going with the airplane, that a lot of the other young pilots didn't because they didn't have that background."

He agrees, but says it was also a lot of luck.

"I understood engines very well. Surprisingly, it helps to know what you're doing. But it's very very important to be lucky. I knew what I was doing, and I was, I think, very lucky. Flak doesn't really play favorites. You could be on your first mission and get a direct hit and that's the end of things. It didn't happen in our case."

His tour lasted into 1944 and when he returned he promptly married June on Oct. 21, 1944. In the meantime, June was also having adventures of her own -- albeit less dangerous ones.

"I was just a kid," she said. "I was only 17 when I got out of high school, and I went to Torrance National Supply -- they were building great big cannons for battle ships. I only had one semester of typing so I got a job with that -- I was working for the stenographer, I was her secretary. I liked the business aspect of it, so I went into economics at UCLA."

June attended UCLA in 1943 and a little into 1944, but after she married she started on her next career -- motherhood.

After the war ended Mark thought he'd be out of the military; instead he was sent to the Pacific where he used his maintenance background to fix planes that had been abandoned in the wake of the "bring the boys home" campaign.

"Those airplanes were sitting with the jungle growing over them practically," he said. "And when I got over there the big thing was trying to recover them and get all this stuff in flying condition again -- it was not a fun time."

He served 21/2 years in the Pacific and ultimately "decided to be a career guy" and served 22 years. During this time, all the responsibilities of family life fell to June.

"We had 17 moves in the Air Force. Five children. And Mark was gone so much, so I had to be the stable one and take care of the family," June said. "It takes a lot of perseverance, courage. You've got to be intelligent. You've got to take care of those five children. I had to work with a lot of other wives and their problems. You just did it, you didn't even question it, you just did it. ... My most important job was to take care of my family, there was nothing else that really mattered. ... [I was always worried about him] but you just don't think about that, you try not to think about that."

Finally when the two oldest boys were getting ready to graduate high school, June demanded they settle in one place so the children would have some roots to come back too. Mark, who had reached the rank of lieutenant colonel, turned down a promotion and retired in 1963. He spent the next 22 years working for United Service Life Insurance Company in Washington, D.C.

"He was 22 when he went into the military, he was 22 years in the military and he was 22 years in business. I thought, 'We're going to do 22 years in Carolina Trace' but we've been here almost 29, so we broke the pattern," June joked.

Mark and June moved to Carolina Trace in 1988, have now been married for 71 years -- 72 in October -- and they have five children, 12 grandchildren and a handful of great-grandchildren.

They both agree that the secret to a long and happy marriage is to not be selfish.

"Number one, caring for each other, that's so important," June said.

"I think a lot of folks think mostly of themselves and in a circumstance like [marriage]," Mark said. "When you have two people that are married and are more interested in themselves, it's not going to work. In other words you have to be concerned with each other and considerate with each other and you got to put up with idiosyncrasies -- she puts up with me, I'm not sure that's always real easy."

He added that mutual attraction doesn't hurt either. "I've been very lucky. When I first met her I thought she was the prettiest thing I ever saw and I think I was right. Even now she makes a lot of people a lot younger than her not look too good. But you can see that I'm a little bit prejudiced."

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