Love Story: Walter and Juanita Hilsenbeck of Massapequa

The Rev. Juanita Duryea Hilsenbeck of Massapequa recalls how Walter Hilsenbeck did some detective work in order to win her heart.

My dad was the Long Island Rail Road station agent in Bay Shore and when I finished high school in 1957, I was hired as an LIRR clerk to fill in at various offices for other clerks on vacation.

Late one Friday afternoon, I was working in the mail room at the Jamaica station when in walked a very good-looking male with very pretty blue eyes.

Walt Hilsenbeck introduced himself and we talked. He had been on medical leave and was returning to work as a ticket clerk in the station in his hometown, Bellaire, Queens, station. He explained that I had worked with a number of his friends during the summer and they told him about me. He was 19.

I had to run to make my diesel train home to Bay Shore and didn't think anything about that meeting until Monday, when Walt called to say "Hi." I was working in the Massapequa station.

This continued every day. He would ask the man in charge of assignments where I was working and would be told that such information wasn't available. Then the man would give Walt a "hint" as to where I was that day.

We learned that we had many interests in common including church, family and music. I played the French horn and he played the organ and we both sang with the LIRR carolers in Penn Station for Christmas.

I had no idea what a pipe organ was, so Walt wanted to take me to Radio City Music Hall for our first date to see and hear the mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ played there. First, Walt had to get permission from my mother, who was very religious and never let me go to the movies. Walt made sure he got me home by my 10 p.m. curfew.

On April 2, 1960, we were married at the Baptist Church of Babylon. Today we have two sons and two grandchildren.

Walt retired in 1987 as LIRR transportation manager. I was ordained a minister in 1983 and retired as pastor emerita at the Peoples Church of Long Beach in 2002. I am now pastor to the Half Hollow Community Church congregation in Dix Hills.

Walt is an active Mason and we are both involved with many charity groups and volunteer in the Masonic Nursing Home in Utica. We love going on cruises and I enjoy listening to Walt play the 1928 Wurlitzer pipe organ we rescued from the Loew's theater in the Bronx. It's installed in our home - over 1,000 pipes and percussion!