The small town of Glenwood was recently portrayed as the center of a storybook romance, seasoned with international intrigue, when Robert and Easter Borom reminisced about their 66 years of marriage that originated in the Glenwood Methodist Church back in 1940.

Both the Boroms were post-war youths with chilling tales of drama that unfolded in the local and international arena during and after World War II.

Destined for some unknown greatness by being born on Easter day, her parents appropriately named her Easter, and the doctor who delivered her added the Lilly to her name.

She presented herself the ninth of ten children born to P. B. and Emma Capps Curtis on March 3, 1921.

More privileged than most of the locals in Crenshaw County during the Great Depression, her father, who was a prominent landowner, school teacher and postmaster, was able to afford his children higher education.

Easter remembers famously her eighteenth year when her father requested that she take a leave from college until her older brother, Henry, graduated.

The rest could easily have been taken out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel concerning her meeting with a handsome young Army Air Corps Private stationed at Maxwell Field in Montgomery.

&uot;The weather

was hot,&uot; Easter said, &uot;I can tell you that!

A group of young people from around Glenwood had gone swimming in Gin Creek, and Bob was there.

We were both smitten right off!

I remember how handsome he was.

Later, he wrote me a poem in a letter, declaring his love for me and I accepted it as a proposal and married him about a year later, and never went back to college!&uot;

Bob, or Cecil, as he’s known to family and friends, said he knew right off he had met the girl of his dreams.

He said what took them a year or so to marry was trying to figure out how they could live on his $84-a-month private’s pay.

Easter also had two brothers, Henry and young Joe, who joined the Army during World War II.

&uot;Joe was very handsome and dashing,&uot; Easter said.

&uot;And everybody said I looked

just like him.

He was a courier for the State Department during World War II, and a Presidential Guard when President Roosevelt entertained Queen Elizabeth at Warm Springs, Georgia, during the war.&uot;

Virginia (Curtis) Bush, the eldest of P. B. Curtis’s grandchildren, said she remembers well going to Georgia when Joe was there guarding the president.

&uot;Joe’s adventures always intrigued me,&uot; Bush said.

&uot;He once told us a man followed him on a plane, then came up behind him in a washroom and said he’d been sent to protect Joe because the woman with whom Joe had a date that night was one of the most notorious spies in Europe.&uot;

Bush added that the dashing young Joe went on the date anyway, but sadly was killed after that in a foxhole while on a mission.

Henry was also killed during the war, training a student pilot that he allowed to swoop down over a town and was unable to pull the plane back up.

Easter also lost a brother-in-law during the war, and later, her nephew, Hiram Bell, who was Governor Big Jim Folsom’s private pilot, died in a local plane crash.

Borom, who retired from the military as a Major, was a communication specialist in World War II and also served in the Korean War.

He said he and Easter spent most of their military life stateside in Roswell, New Mexico.

It was in 1947, while the Boroms were stationed in Roswell, that the rumored crash of a UFO was sighted on a ranch near Roswell.

Borom said all the officers on the base were sworn to secrecy and he has never talked about classified information.

He does say it was rumored that two alien bodies were held at Walker Air Force Hospital in Roswell, under tight security.

This was following the newspaper report that the intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment Group at Roswell Army Airfield was in possession of a flying saucer.

He said the wreckage and bodies, if there were such, were flown aboard a B-29 piloted by his friend Pappy Henderson, to Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base after the mysterious crash.

Roswell now houses two UFO museums as its claim to fame over the 1947 incident.

The Boroms enjoyed life on the eastern plains of New Mexico so much that they became permanent citizens there after Borom’s retirement.

He then invested, as part owner, in a water purifying system, and served as its manager.

A humorous family story told by Borom’s daughter, Linda Agar, was that when her mother gave birth to her sister, Lisle, her father braided her hair so militarily tight, that when he brought her to see her mother at the hospital, Easter thought Linda was a little Chinese girl.

Agar also remembers Borom as always being up to a challenge.

&uot;He was such a wonderful cook,&uot; Agar said, &uot;that he thought sewing couldn’t be hard!

So, he made Mama a plaid dress, matched all the plaids perfectly, then made drapes for our entire house in Roswell, that later sold with the house.&uot;

The Borom’s younger daughter, Lisle, who still lives in New Mexico, remembers her mother as a real tigress when it came to claiming the honors both her daughters earned in school.

Both she and Linda describe their mother as always being an advocate for children’s rights.

The Boroms moved back to the family farm near Troy in 1991, that was an original homestead, and continues in the family as their daughter Linda’s home.

They traveled extensively until Easter lost her sight.

Both the Boroms are unshakable in their faith and have had no regrets about their destined paths.

A ritual around their breakfast table was morning devotion, and their strong faith has sustained them through the years.

They excitingly anticipate their 66th wedding anniversary in November of 2006, and Borom will also celebrate his 90th birthday in December of 2006.

They have been residents of the Luverne Health and Rehab since 2005.