Don and Jolene "Jo" Wooten pause for a photo at their Sparta home. Photo by Laura Thornburg

Valentine's couple Don and Jolene Wooten celebrate 51 years of marriage

A Sparta couple credits their 51 years of marriage to the Lord and the strength they have gained through their belief in Him.

Through Don Wooten's battle with cancer, he and wife Jolene "Jo," have come out of the battle stronger Christians, stronger individuals and a stronger couple.

In the early 1980s Don was diagnosed with a benign tumor being cut from his chest.

"I remember the night before they were going to operate…I came back to my room and I got down on my knees in that hospital room and I started praying for all the churches I'd been to. I didn't ask nothing for me, but I was praying for them. I came through that fine."

A short time later, Don had a massive heart attack.

He recalled, "I hadn't had a pain in my life, no high blood pressure, no cholesterol problem, didn't smoke, nothing. She got me to the hospital just in time because I was leaving when I got to the emergency room. The last thing I remember was going through the door in a wheelchair."

When diagnosed with cancer 10 years later, doctors gave him three years to live pending chemotherapy treatments.

"I asked what was going to happen if I don't take these chemo treatments. He (a doctor at Wake Forest University "N.C. Baptist" Medical Center) said in two months my bones would start hurting me so bad I can't hardly stand it. ‘But (we) can give you morphine and keep you reasonably comfortable until the end.' We prayed about it and we told him we'd do it. I went to Baptist and was there for five weeks, took five kinds of chemo…after five weeks, I got ready to come home and I got the sickest I'd ever been, (I had) pancreatitis and a gallbladder attack at the same time."

In an attempt to fix the problem, he was starved for two days. Of the experience, he maintained his faith.

"The Lord's blessed us. I had no fear," he said, noting his primary concern was that of Jo, who had been by his side.

"The whole time she stayed down there and wouldn't hardly eat. Sometimes she wouldn't even go to the cafeteria to eat, she stayed right with me."

While she had asked people to keep her ailing husband in their prayers, a friend, Barbara Hendrix, prayed for her friend as well.

"She said, ‘I'm going to pray for you.' I didn't say anything, but I thought, ‘pray for me? I want you to pray for Don.' She told me later, ‘I'm going to pray for you because you're going to need it.' It was rough, it really was. There was a lot of nights sitting there in the Baptist hospital. Sometimes, I'd have a chair…that I'd sit in to sleep through the night, it wouldn't be more than a lawn chair. It was rough."

She was asked by Don to go home to get rest after being by his side for an extended amount time. "Home is where you are. I couldn't come home without him."

Courtship and Parenthood

In the late 1950s, the recent high school graduates, he from Alleghany and her from Wilkes County, met at a local textile plant where they both were employed.

"We met in March, dated five months and got married," said Don. "We had these good friends Jim and Pat Gillespie (who) stood up for us."

Don went on to say, "We got married Aug. 8, 1959 and that winter, we had a little trailer on (N.C.) 18 here, it was an eight by 36, about like a camper today." Recalling an early part of their marriage he continued, "That March of '60, it snowed up to a foot-and-a-half every Wednesday for several Wednesdays and (it) would drift.