Celebrating the love of a lifetime

Sharren saw two guys playing catch right across her path to class at Temple Ambler. She started to run.

“I intercepted the football,” she remembers. “I took it into the ladies’ room.”

“That was the first time I noticed her,” said Dave, the guy who lost his football that mid-September day in 1961.

Dave thought about the interceptor – a lot – and learned her name was Sharren. He did nothing about it until December, when a friend said he was planning to ask out Sharren. “He was big and handsome and I felt threatened,” Dave remembered. “I knew then that I needed to act.”

Sharren hadn’t thought about the players since she left their football in a hallway where they would find it. Then one of them walked up, introduced himself, and asked her for a date.

There was so much snow that Dave had to put chains on his tires for the trip from his parents’ home in Plymouth Township to her parents’ home in Huntington Valley. “Then she beat me at bowling.”

He was smitten with this beautiful, smart girl and her moxie. “I started following her around like a puppy dog,” he said. “I started cutting classes to be with her. She started to consume all of my attention.”

Sharren liked Dave, too. “He was interesting and he was cute,” she said. She wanted him to be her boyfriend, but Dave hadn’t said he wanted the role, so Sharren kept her options open.

One Sunday in April 1962, Dave drove to Sharren’s dormitory hoping to take her out. She was out — with another guy. “I stewed all night,” he said. “On Monday, I confronted her.”

“We aren’t exclusive,” Sharren said, simply.

“Let’s be exclusive,” said Dave.

Neither dated anyone else again. Dave was in love. “I loved her smile, and that she was down to earth and always ready to laugh,” he said. “She was very open and no one dominated – we were equally matched.”

Soon, Sharren was, too. “I loved how he was very affectionate, and that he was a talker. He was and still is handsome. And he is just everything I had ever thought I would want to end up with.”

That fall, Dave gave Sharren his Temple pin – a “pinning” that meant they would soon be engaged. He wanted to give her a ring, but Dave lacked the funds. For nine days in spring 1963, he worked at a fancy joint in Lakewood, N.J., slept in the basement, and saved $125 in tips.

That April, he asked Sharren’s dad for a little help and the two went to Jewelers Row, where the nicest ring he could almost afford cost $150. His future father-in-law spotted Dave the extra $25.

“He didn’t propose; we just assumed we were getting married and we made all kinds of plans,” said Sharren. And then at a dinner at her family’s place, Dave gave her a card with the ring inside.

They wed at the top of the Adelphia Hotel in a ceremony led by a rabbi who agreed to marry Sharren, who was then a secular Jew, and former Baptist and current agnostic Dave – provided the two take a 20-week introduction to Judaism course.

Soon after they wed, they graduated. The couple began married life with six tough months as the house parents of 15-year-old children with severe emotional problems. Sharren, who is now 79, then launched her 35-year preschool teaching career. She taught in Philadelphia, then paused her outside-the-home work when the couple’s daughter, Donna, was born. The family of three had little money but a lot of fun. They made day trips down the Shore and to the Philadelphia Zoo. They had many memorable picnics.

When Donna turned 3, she went to preschool and Sharren returned to teaching. For five years, she owned and operated Trevose Nursey School and Kindergarten. After the couple moved from Philly to Cherry Hill, Sharren taught first at ECLC Learning Center and then at Temple Emmanuel. After retiring at 60, she worked as a public school substitute teacher and became a docent at the National Museum of American Jewish History.

Dave, who is now 80, worked for printing companies for several years until Sharren’s father asked him to come work for him at his plumbing and heating business. He would learn the business from the bottom up, his father-in-law said, and he helped Dave get into the plumbers’ union. Eight years later, in February 1976, Dave launched Dave Filan Plumbing & Heating. He sold the business in 2008, but continued to work there until retiring 12 years later.

In 1994, Dave proposed to his wife with a second engagement ring – she still wears the original on a necklace. He wanted to marry her all over again in celebration of their 30th anniversary.

“I wasn’t big on it,” said Sharren. “I agreed to do it for Dave, but only with a few guests.”

The rabbi came to their home. Their nephews held up the chuppah under which the couple said vows they had written. “It was an unbelievable day and a fantastic experience,” Sharren said. “I wish we had invited more people.”

Dave had left organized religion because of its rigidity – at least in his former church, questions were often frowned upon — but his spiritual side was never really dead. And as they raised their daughter in the Jewish faith, Sharren, too, had become more spiritual. A rabbi gave Dave books to read and happily answered the sorts of deep questions he couldn’t ask in his childhood church.

In 1997, in their mid-50s, Dave and Sharren retook the introduction to Judaism class. He converted. He had a bar mitzvah and she had a bat mitzvah.

Their daughter Donna married Stuart, and they have two sons, Josh and Andrew. “Their parents were wonderful enough to share those boys with us, and we lavish so much love on them,” Dave said. Dave and Sharren have traveled to many places – England, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hawaii. They’ve made two trips to Israel, the second of which they spent volunteering with the Israel Defense Forces. Sharren stuffed duffle bags and cleaned tools and Dave worked in the kitchen. They are really looking forward to their next trip. This summer, the couple will take Donna, Stuart, Josh, and Andrew on an Alaskan cruise.

“Many of the things that I fell in love with haven’t changed,” said Dave, reflecting on nearly 59 years of marriage. “She is my equal in every way – she doesn’t let me get away with anything. And there hasn’t been a single day since I fell in love with her that I haven’t felt that pitter-patter in my heart when I see her.”

Sharren relishes the security of her husband’s love. “I feel so adored by my husband every day,” she said. “He must tell me at least 20 times a day how much he loves me, how beautiful I am, how wonderful I am,” she said. “He has made me feel like the most special woman in the world, and you can’t get better than that.”

This isn’t to say that life hasn’t brought challenges, Sharren said – such as five years ago when they went to Arizona and Dave unexpectedly needed a triple bypass. And there have been less dramatic troubles – disagreements and conflicts that naturally arise when two people share one living space for decades. “If you can come through that and still come out as friends as well as lovers, if you can be parents together, and figure out all the money issues and still like and love each other at the end, you’ve really accomplished something,” Dave said.