As people around the world feel the joy and excitement of Christmas just around the corner, this Christmas Eve is an extra special occasion for Clinton and Pat Savage, who are celebrating their 70th anniversary today.
The Savages met in the late 1940s at Pat’s church, where he walked her home after service.
“I thought she was beautiful,” Clinton says, recounting the first time they met.
Pat lived in the Baldwin area, and Clinton lived near Lula. Neither of them had cars or phones, so every weekend, Clinton would make the 12-mile hike from his home to hers. He says he was able to cut his travel time down by wading through Mossy Creek when he would visit her on the weekends.
“We had a lot to talk about when we did get together,” Clinton said. “That didn’t bother me, the walking. I enjoyed it because I knew I was going to see her when I got there.”
Clinton enlisted in the service in 1950 where he did “a lot of things,” serving in combat in Korea during his time overseas.
While Clinton was deployed in Korea, he decided to seal the deal and asked Pat to marry him in a letter. She was happy to say yes, and when he was on leave from Korea, he showed up at her work in his uncle’s car in 1951 and whisked her away to be married on Christmas Eve.
“I looked out the window and saw him, so I just got up and left and didn’t tell [my work] anything,” Pat says. “They knew what I was doing and didn’t say anything to me. When we got back, I went back to work.”
Pat says she didn’t even make time to get ready or have a photo taken before their wedding, and Clinton got married while still in uniform. They were married by Joe Holbrook in his Cornelia home with Holbrook’s wife as their only witness. After their wedding, they stopped by the drive-in theater and spent the evening together before returning to their regular lives.
Not long after they were married, Pat followed Clinton wherever he needed to go while he was in the service. They lived in California and New Jersey before returning to Georgia, living in Atlanta.
Clinton worked with AT&T after leaving the service, and while in Atlanta, he and Pat welcomed their only son into the world.
After he grew up, their son and two grandchildren moved to Habersham. Pat and Clinton returned to Habersham in 1993 to be with family. They built their dream home in Cornelia shortly after, and still live there together today.
After 70 years, the Savages say that love, honesty, commitment, truthfulness, respect and forgiveness have kept them together over all those years. But they both say love is the most important part of it all.
“Real, honest-to-goodness love [kept us together],” Clinton says. “If we hadn’t loved each other we would never have made it.”
They say that after every fight, they would tell each other they loved each other, forgive one another and make up.
“It takes a lot of forgiveness,” Pat says. “And it takes a lot of love. Mostly love. We’ve had a good marriage.”
