Isabell and Preble Staver met on a blind date in Philadelphia, when they were barely two young people with their whole lives ahead of them.
Then the war came and separated them: she left as a Navy nurse, while he served as a soldier in the United States Marine Corps, where he earned the Bronze Star. When it was all over, they reunited, got married, and had five children. Their daughter Laurie describes them as the heart of the family: he, a large and outgoing man; she, the woman who taught him to be kind.
Seventy-one years after that blind date, Isabell and Preble died on the same day, October 25, 2017, in Norfolk, Virginia. They were buried together in Virginia Beach during Veterans Day weekend, as if even death had decided not to separate them again.