ATHOL — Social distancing is key during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it doesn’t prevent a newly discovered love — and marriage — from happening, as one local couple found out.
Maj. Nancy Townsend was planning a late November 2019 kickoff for the Athol Salvation Army’s Red Kettle Campaign, and put out a call for some musicians to play at the event.
Townsend, 66, brought her E-flat alto horn that day, and Herb Thomas, 78, of Leominster, who had retired from the Salvation Army several years before but was still involved in many of its activities, arrived with his baritone horn. The two chatted for a few minutes and went on to play and celebrate with everyone else.
In January, the Salvation Army invited both and others who had participated in the kickoff to a spiritual retreat in Sturbridge. They both accepted, not knowing the other had been invited.
“I went early to breakfast and when I walked in, Nancy was sitting with another woman, and I walked over and asked if I could sit with them,” Thomas said. “Again we chatted, but didn’t see a lot of each other that weekend. As we were all heading home, I walked over to say goodbye to Nancy and suggested we maybe do lunch sometime.”
A widower, Thomas’ wife had died the previous February, so he was simply thinking two new friends could get together to talk.
“I felt very uncomfortable ‘dating’ too soon,” he said. “I wasn’t really even thinking of it as a date, but I was also thinking about my wife.”
While Townsend had been widowed for five years, she had no intention of dating, either. She missed the “coupleness” and conversation with a man, but that was about it.
“He was someone nice to talk with, so I thought it would be nice to have a male friend,” she said.
In late February, they met for lunch at 110 Grill in Athol and had a nice time. So, they planned another lunch. And then another.
Then the pandemic hit. Thomas and Townsend had spent enjoyable lunches together, stopped at each other’s apartments for cookies and coffee, and had planned more get-togethers, never dreaming those plans would be stopped in their tracks.
“I know it was fast, but we were starting to have feelings for each other,” Townsend recalled.
It was Friday, March 13, when they had dinner and decided their relationship had taken a turn. But it was also the day the state started closing down because of the pandemic, and officials were asking people to stay home.
“That following Monday, we went to New Hampshire, which hadn’t yet closed down, and had lunch together,” she said. “The big question for us was, ‘How do we do this during a pandemic?’”
Townsend stayed in Athol and Thomas in Leominster. The two ended up spending a lot of time on FaceTime and talking by phone.
“Sometimes, we’d just sit and smile at each other over the internet,” Thomas said. “But there weren’t any distractions like couples typically have — we weren’t going to the movies or doing things that took up time but didn’t allow us to truly get to know each other. We just talked and talked and learned everything about each other.”
The week before Easter, Athol was working on a sewer line when sewage started to back up in Townsend’s home, so she couldn’t stay there. The Salvation Army sent her to Sharon to its summer camp, so Townsend made plans for Thomas to come there for Easter dinner. They would eat outside, wear masks and practice social distancing.
“He surprised me with his family,” she said. “By that time we had talked about marriage, knew it was what we wanted to do eventually, so he thought I should get to know his children and grandchildren. But, that was going to be tricky during a pandemic.”
The children who couldn’t attend met Townsend online the next week.
During another family dinner at the camp shortly after, Thomas asked Townsend to take a walk, sat her on a bench and dropped to one knee.
“He wanted to propose in front of our families,” she said. “They all knew all about it. I had no idea.”
Townsend, who eventually returned to Athol, said at first they thought about having an intimate ceremony at the courthouse because they didn’t want to expose anyone to the virus. Instead, they decided to invite the people they would have invited in normal times and let them decide whether to come.
“Some people couldn’t travel, or didn’t want to,” she said. “Others didn’t want to expose themselves to anything, so declined. We understood.”
The couple knew about an outdoor butterfly garden in Philadelphia, and that’s where they decided to get married.
“It was going to be outdoors with social distancing and masks and all the precautions. We even had people take their temperatures before arriving,” she said. “It was a beautiful park with a beautiful playground, so the grandkids could play. We waited until September, when things were opening back up again and people could move around a little more freely.”
Townsend and Thomas didn’t want to forget anything about the day, so some wedding photos were taken with and some without masks. Her 94-year-old mother couldn’t attend, so they called her during the ceremony to offer a blessing while on speakerphone.
“It was what it was at the time,” Townsend said. “We did all that we could to keep it safe.”
After the wedding, the couple took a trip along Route 66.
“I had decided that the year I turned 66, I was going to travel Route 66,” Townsend said. “It was nice to do it with someone I love. I never dreamed that would happen.”
Townsend has changed her name to Townsend-Thomas. She said she kept “Townsend” because that’s how she’s known throughout the Salvation Army. She said she never thought she’d fall in love again this late in life, and certainly never thought it would happen during a worldwide pandemic.
What was amazing — and she doesn’t know if it would have happened without a pandemic looming — was that they spent so much time just talking, because that’s all they could do. For that reason, she believes the relationship moved seamlessly and with no awkwardness.
“In one way, it was very wonderful,” she said. “In another way, it was very strange. But in the end, I got to marry a wonderful, lovely, marvelous lady. We just had to get here in a very restricted way.”
The two agreed that what really got them through was their flexibility and determination to make the best of the situation.
“You just have to weigh what’s important in times like these,” she said. “We felt we had no time to waste, so we didn’t. We weren’t going to let a pandemic get in our way.”
The couple now lives in Athol with his teacup Chihuahua, Bella, and her Lhasa Apso, Hudson. They still take precautions through the pandemic, but said now they can smile at each other from across the table and hold hands while they’re doing it.
“This was all so serendipitous,” Thomas said. “What were the chances?”
Reach Anita Fritz at 413-772-9591 or afritz@recorder.com.