KAILUA-KONA — Jim McQuaid never considered marriage during his time as a communications operator with the Flying Tigers during World War II.
Then, he met Mae.
Last week, the Kona couple celebrated 71 years of marriage as well as a long, simple and prosperous life unburdened by regret.
“A happy marriage takes two people who love each other but are also willing to give and take a little bit. You can’t have your own way all the time,” Mae said as she sat with her husband on their lanai overlooking the 16th fairway at Kona Country Club. “Part of it is love and part of it is effort. You have to have some of both.”
Jim sailed out of San Francisco on the SS Mariposa, the first U.S. ship launched as part of the war, in January 1942. Before landing in China to battle the Japanese there, he sailed through the Panama Canal and spent time in Australia.
At different points during his deployment, he found himself in Plymouth, Maine, as well as Chicago.
Two years after the Mariposa set sail, she carried him home safely.
“I never thought about marriage because I never found anybody,” Jim said. “I traveled around the world looking for her.”
He crossed Mae’s path in 1945 on a military base in Clovis, N.M., only a few months into her military service. She was part of the Women’s Army Air Corps, deciding to leave her home in Wyoming with the hope of later attending college by way of the G.I. Bill.
Jim was the staff sergeant in charge of the office while Mae worked in the shop fixing speakers and completing any other tasks needing attention.
After six months of courtship, Jim popped the question as the U.S. neared victory on the other side of the globe. With Mae’s answer, Jim’s plans to re-enlist changed, as did the course of both their lives.
“It sounds a little corny, but all of the sudden, you see somebody who rings your bell,” Mae said smiling. “Instead of going to college, I met Jim and got married. That was a better deal.”
Part of the timing of the proposal had to do with Mae’s military commitment.
“I was out. If we got married, she could get out. Otherwise, she had to stay in for three years,” Jim said. “So, I sprung her.”
The two piled their belongings into the back of their 1933 Ford pickup and lit out from “San Antone” for Denver in search of the American Dream. They made stops in Wyoming and northern California before landing in Los Angeles, having already welcomed two of their three children into the world by then.
Jim worked as a meat cutter before joining the military and dreamed of one day owning his own market. He took a job at a chain store, and eventually found himself as a market manager in Hollywood in a storefront next to a bakery.
If the couple’s first stroke of serendipity was finding each other in the vast deserts of America’s Southwest, their second experience with a beneficial confluence of events came when Jim befriended the bakery’s owner.
He would wait for her to get off work every evening, then drive her back to her neighborhood, which was on his way home. The two spoke about his aspirations to open his own shop.
On one of their drives, about six months after they met, the bakery owner offered to lend him the $2,500 he needed to get his vision off the ground. That was in 1951.
The market Jim opened and Mae helped manage has been listed as one of the top 100 small markets in L.A. on several occasions, and still operates in Woodland Hills to this day. It currently is operated by Jim’s and Mae’s second child, Mike.
The couple retired in the late 1970s, and landed on the Big Island in 1977 after searching the California coast for a place to spend their golden years. They’ve witnessed first-hand Kona develop and change.
“When we came, it was so easy to make friends,” Mae said. “Everybody was about our age and looking to retire. At that time, it was a much smaller group. Things were not as expensive, so more middle-income families like us could afford to live here.”
But despite the changes, the McQuaids still love living in Kona — except for the traffic. The island has remained the couple’s base for the last 40 years as they’ve traveled the world.
They’re more stationary now. Mae is 93 and Jim will celebrate his 99th birthday in October, but they still get back to the mainland yearly to visit their three children and five grandchildren. And Jim, a multiple club champion golfer at Kona Country Club, continued golfing avidly until a back injury sidelined him earlier this year.
Mae said the key to their seven joyous decades together comes down to one simple concept: tolerance coupled with honesty.
“You’re not always going to think alike,” she said. “It would be a really dull life if you did.”
Jim agreed and said that looking back, he wouldn’t have done anything differently.
“We’ve had very nice lives. We built a nice family, and we’ve done a lot of things,” Jim said. “Our marriage could not have been any better. It seems like only yesterday.”
Email Max Dible at mdible@westhawaiitoday.com.
