Jackie and several other Philly teenagers spending their summer in Browns Mills, NJ had just won first prize in the Mirror Lake Water Carnival sailing competition. Then her little sister, Alice, was crowned Carnival Queen of 1948. Jackie hit the dance floor and celebrated with a joyful Charleston.
A boy across the room noticed, nudged his friend, Stacy, and said, “I dare you to ask its to dance.”
Stacy, who lived in Pemberton Borough, had arrived at the club on the boat of a high school sweetheart – one of several girls whose company he enjoyed at the time. She was still tying up the boat when he lunged at Jackie.
“I thought he was going to ask my girlfriend to dance, but he came straight to me,” Jackie recalls. “He had this curly hair and he wore his shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled up his sleeve and he reminded me of James Dean,” she said. “He was so cute and I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s my son!’ “
Stacy went to every dance he could, but had never seen anyone do the Charleston, which was popular in the 1920s. He decided he had to learn. “Jackie was quite the dancer and quite the singer, and she had such a great attitude,” he said. “It just seemed like it was meant to be and I never saw another girl.”
When the summer ended, Jackie, who had recently graduated from Olney High, returned home to Philadelphia and became a secretary at a food delivery company. She sent letters weekly to Stacy, who would call when he received them. At least every other week, Stacy drove to Olney to see him. “I had to cross the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge and it cost me a nickel, which was terrible when I was only making 35 cents an hour as a mechanic,” he recalled. Jackie’s mother let her sleep on the sofa so they could see each other the next day – no payment required.
In September 1949, on the way back from a friend’s wedding, Stacy pulled over on a Rancocas Creek bridge and asked Jackie to marry him.
They were married on April 15, 1950, in a small wooden chapel that once stood in Hainesport. Neither of their families had the money to help pay for a reception for 75, but Jackie’s former employer provided all the food, family members served it, and Jackie’s Uncle George’s oompah band played music. so that everyone could dance.
Early in their marriage, Stacy became a home builder. He built the couple’s first home in Pemberton, starting very small and basic and refining and adding as money allowed and additional children were needed. Stacy’s company, Stockton and Dull, grew for 20 years. Then he bought out his partner to form Stockton Construction.
When the couple moved to New Jersey, Jackie took a job at a local bank. She left after the couple’s first child, Stacy A., was born in 1951. About every two years, another child arrived: Jaclyn, Thomas and Alice.
Stacy’s parents had separated when he was very young. He didn’t meet his father until shortly before he and Jackie were married, and never had a relationship with him. Stacy was close to his mother, but was primarily raised by his grandparents, whom he adored. However, the absence of parents at things like parents’ day at school left scars. He and Jackie were adamant that their children – and now seven grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren on the way – never doubted their importance and how much they loved them.
From the early days, Stacy and Jackie took their children on camping trips and down the Coast. Sometime in the 1960s, Jackie’s sister Alice asked her and Stacy if they wanted to buy a Ship Bottom cottage with her and her husband, Kenny. “We spent a lot of summers there raising our kids,” Jackie said. All the cousins remain close, just as their parents had hoped.
When the youngest of the Stockton children was in high school, Jackie decided it was time to pursue her dream of teaching. She first enrolled in community college and then transferred to Glassboro, which is now Rowan University. Jackie’s two daughters also graduated from Glassboro—in fact, she and Alice shared the stage in the school’s production of “Oh! What a Beautiful War.”
Jackie, who is now 92, taught English for 20 years at Burlington County VoTech in Medford Lakes.
Decades ago, Jackie’s sister and brother-in-law sold their half of the Ship Bottom cottage to Jackie and Stacy. Stacy, now 93, took on one last big project before retiring: He tore down the old summer cottage and built the year-round home where the couple has lived full-time since 1990.
Asked about the secret to their long marriage, Jackie said: “Lots of hugs, lots of kisses and lots of shouting at each other.” Stacy said, more seriously, “You have to cooperate and you have to do a lot of things—sometimes things you don’t want to do.”
The couple was set to celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary in the spring of 2020. A month before the celebration, family and friends had gathered to celebrate Jackie’s 90th birthday. It was early in the COVID-19 pandemic and the world had not yet shut down. Jackie, Stacy and several other people — including Jackie’s best friend — were later diagnosed with COVID. After long illnesses, Stacy and Jackie recovered. But others, including Jackie’s friend, did not.
Last June, family and friends gathered to celebrate Stacy and Jackie’s 70-plus year anniversary. It was beautiful but bittersweet.
Jackie’s thoughts kept returning to her late best friend. She also thought about her little sister, who had been gone for about five years, and the friend who had dared Stacy to ask Jackie to dance so long ago. He died last year. “When you live as long as we do, you lose most of your friends,” Jackie said. “A lot of people have gone.”
But their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren – many of whom live nearby – were with them to celebrate the anniversary. “They played the old songs from the ’40s and ’50s, and we had a chance to dance along from the beginning,” Stacy said. The couple danced to their all-time favorite, “My Happiness.”
Stacy and Jackie’s son, Tom, has a new home in the Gulf of Mexico. “Hopefully next winter we can go to Florida for a while and see Tom,” Stacy said. “It’s very quiet here in the winter.”
“We have to take it one day at a time,” Jackie said. “But what the hell, we still have dreams.”
