Family: Charles Clayton Hejtmanek / Eleanor V Peterson Hejtmanek

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Anniversary- Hejtmanek, Clayton and Eleanor 2

The Hejtmaneks (photo in the news clip)

If there’s a romantic in the group, it would be (Charles) Clayton Hejtmanek, who hails from Delia, just north of Rossville. He said the first time he saw Eleanor, the woman he married, he thought she was “the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.”

That was nearly 63 years ago, and he still calls her “sweetheart.” Never mind that Eleanor had come to “take my job.”

He was heading for military service in the Army. It was nine months before Pearl Harbor, he said. He was working at Kansas City’s Consumer’s Co-op, and she was hired to take his position. It was a job that entailed shipping farm commodities across the country.

He was sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., where he ended up training and dong administrative work. When they met, he was 24, and she was 21.

“I said to myself ‘That’s the girls I’ve just got to have,’” Clayton Hejtmanek said.

They dated. They liked dancing, so that was one of their main pastimes, dancing at Kansas City’s Play-Mor.

While he was gone to the service, they corresponded. As he was being transferred from Missouri to Abilene, Texas, they decided to get married.

Looking back on their marriage, they said that what has worked for them is that they “like to do a lot of the same things together.” These interests include gardening and lots of traveling across the United States by bus and by airlines.

If you want to keep a marriage together, they said “you’ve got to be able to give and take” in the relationship.

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