Gordon and Donna Bennett will celebrate their 60th anniversary Saturday. (Photo by Elizabeth Warnimont)

Gordon and Donna Bennett of Benicia will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary in Benicia Saturday at the Benicia Veterans Memorial Hall on First Street – if it will hold them and all of their expected guests, that is. The last time they celebrated here, Mr. Gordon says, they filled the hall to its capacity of roughly 300 people.

Gordon Bennett moved to Benicia when he was in the fourth grade. He attended Highland School, which stood at the current site of Duncan Graham Park, across from the National Guard Armory at the end of Hillcrest Avenue. He also attended Benicia High School when it was located at the building that currently houses the Benicia Police Department on L Street.

“We will celebrate on Saturday (Sept. 3),” Mr. Bennett told the Herald in an interview Friday. “Our anniversary is Oct. 6, but our son is on an Alaskan cruise right now and he’ll return to San Francisco next week. We wanted to do the 60th while he was out here.”

The Bennetts’ son Ricky lives in Kentucky with his wife Kathy.

“We’re also celebrating my 80th birthday, which was in May.”

Bennett is a veteran of the U.S. Navy.

“I served on three different ships. I got to see a lot of the world, in both the Korean and Vietnam eras.”

Mrs. Bennett arrived in Benicia in 1951 from North Dakota. She joined the ranks of women memorialized by the iconic “Rosie the Riveter,” working at the Benicia Arsenal after graduating from Benicia High at age 17. Mrs. Bennett left the Arsenal in 1962 to go to work at Bank of America in Vallejo, then eventually retired as a bank vice president from Redwood Bank, also in Vallejo.

“We started going together in April of 1953,” Mr. Bennett shared. “She was 14 and I was 16. We went to a carnival and I won this chalk pig knocking over milk bottles.”

The pig is a bit worse for wear but still intact, on display in the Bennett home.

“You give and take a lot,” Mrs. Bennett says of staying married for six decades. “You have to talk it out. You might get upset and even walk out. But then you have to talk it out. Sit down together, and be truthful.”

A warm smile flashed across Mrs. Bennett’s face as she offered some parting words of wisdom: “Of course, love makes all the difference.”

Sharing is caring!