Love Story: Brought together by oxen at Old Bethpage Village Restoration

Ann (nee Voltz) Becker of Mount Sinai talks about meeting her husband, Walter.

When I first saw Walter, he was delivering a calf at the Powell farm at Old Bethpage Village Restoration. It was December 1975, I was 18 and a volunteer there. Walter was 17 and lived nearby in Plainview. I grew up in North Massapequa. Little did I realize that Walter and I would start dating, marry and raise four beautiful daughters together.

We were friends first and then started dating with a little help from the older museum interpreters, who recommended each of us to the other in glowing terms! I guess they saw something we didn’t at first, though Walter says he knew he wanted to marry me after our first date. I wasn’t quite so sure! But that changed. We dated for a year, and each of us remembers the day we knew we would build a life together. Walter was driving oxen, and I was standing on a porch. We both remember hearing bells going off.

We were married Jan. 17, 1981, at Maria Regina Roman Catholic Church in Seaford with a reception at the Knights of Columbus hall in Bethpage. We flew to St. Maarten for a weeklong honeymoon that almost didn’t happen. The pilot had difficulty on the landing approach at the airport, which was notorious for its short runway and windy conditions. We landed successfully, and the air traffic controllers came out of the tower to applaud the pilot’s skill. Later that week we were told a plane had nearly crashed. Turned out it was ours! Glad we didn’t know it at the time.

After coming home, we moved to an apartment in Hicksville. I was working as an underwriter at Travelers Insurance in Garden City, and Walter as a marketing assistant for ET Electronics in Hauppauge. He continued to work in the electronics field, becoming vice president and general manager of an electronics testing facility. We moved to Mount Sinai in 1982. Walter now owns a business still serving the electronics industry. I stayed home to raise our daughters while pursuing a master’s degree and doctorate in history from Stony Brook University. I teach history at Empire State College.

We are very much involved in our community. Walter’s garden has been selected by the Garden Conservancy for the past five years as one of the best Open Days gardens on Long Island. He was active in the Heritage Trust, the nonprofit organization responsible for Mount Sinai’s Heritage Park, a popular pedestrian-friendly, multiuse facility. He also founded the Mount Sinai Garden Club. I was a founding director of the Heritage Trust and have been president of the Mount Sinai Civic Association since 2014 and active in the organization since 1984.

Walter is the most generous man I know and always makes me laugh. Although some of his jokes are corny, and he repeats them regularly, we have fun together and have created a wonderful life. Family is the core of our lives. We enjoy entertaining and hosting holiday meals, Easter egg hunts, July 4 parties, and poker and game nights for our respective families, friends and neighbors. Two of our four beautiful daughters are married to wonderful men, and we have five wonderful grandchildren — three grandsons and two granddaughters.

Having been with Walter so long, I have this advice for young couples: Embrace life and don't worry about the little things. Marriage is not always easy but well worth the sacrifices and challenges for all the joy it has brought to our lives.

We will be celebrating our 40th anniversary in January, hopefully with a large party of family and friends.

— With Ann Donahue-Smukler