50 years of life, love, children, and adventures

The moment he saw her walking up the synagogue stairs, Warren wanted to know everything about her.

“Who is that?” he asked his friend for starters.

“That’s Millie Sherman,” the friend said. Even her name was unfamiliar – strange considering Warren had attended Temple Sholom at Large and the Boulevard for all 22 years of his life.

He had just settled into his seat when he saw her again – across the aisle, and looking right at him. For the duration of that 1972 Yom Kippur service, the two unabashedly stared at each other and smiled.

“What was her name again?” Warren asked his friend after the service. “Millie Sherman,” the friend reminded him. “But she’s on the verge of getting engaged.”

Millie, then 19, could not stop thinking about the “adorable, hippy-ish looking” guy from across the synagogue aisle. “Who was that?” she asked her mother.

Gertrude had noticed her daughter’s eyes were not on the rabbi, and where they were instead. His name is Warren, she told Millie. Gertrude knew his mother, Rosalie Potash, from the beauty salon. Millie cracked open the phone book. It took her a month to get up the guts to dial.

Warren was just home from basketball when his mother told him that Millie Sherman had called twice.

He couldn’t place the name, but dialed her number.

“I’m the girl from the synagogue,” Millie explained. “Why didn’t you call me?”

Warren knew immediately who she was, but he was confused. “Someone told me you were on the verge of getting engaged,” he said.

“That’s not true,” said Millie.

They spent 90 minutes talking about their families, their Oxford Circle neighborhood, their synagogue, and their high school – North East. “We had all of these things in common, but she was just in a different orbit since she is three years younger than me, so we had never met,” Warren said.

Their first date was the following Monday. “This movie had just come out, and everybody said it was great,” said Millie. She heartily disagrees. “Deliverance is definitely not a Millie movie. And I was so freaked out that I was leaning on him – a stranger!”

Warren didn’t mind. She accepted his dinner invitation for Wednesday, and they planned a date for Saturday, too.

“On Saturday night, I would have asked her to marry me,” said Warren. “I was afraid to tell her [that I loved her], afraid that I might chase her away. So I waited a few more days, and two or three more dates.”

On the evening of the 10th day that they knew each other, sitting in Warren’s Oldsmobile Cutlass in front of Millie’s Alma Street home, Warren said: “I wouldn’t be afraid to get married.”

Millie wasn’t afraid either, she said. “I felt the same thing he did – I was just so in love from the very beginning.”

His parents, Rosalie and Irvin, and hers, Gertrude and Bob, were stunned by their children’s sudden engagement. Yet familiarity forged by the beauty parlor, the synagogue and its men’s club, and the fact that Warren’s Uncle Martin was the salesperson who provided General Mills products for Bob’s corner store, made them comfortable with the match. All gave their blessing.

Warren’s and Millie’s friends, however, were not so sure. “People thought we were nuts,” Warren said.

Two days before Thanksgiving, he gave her a ring.

Warren, who is now 72, played semi-pro basketball in the Jewish League every Sunday night, and Millie went to his games. “I had no idea what I was watching at first,” said Millie, now 69.

He also took her to her first Flyers game.

There were also more movies, and dinners out, but what they did never mattered, the couple agree. “We had so much fun together,” Millie said. “We laughed and laughed the whole time.”

“There was this ease in talking to her,” Warren said. He appreciated their shared values and that neither of them rooted their happiness in material things. “I was looking for a low-maintenance person to be part of my life, as I’m pretty low-maintenance,” he said. Millie agrees.

Millie and Warren married on June 24, 1973 – the first Sunday available at Temple Sholom. About 200 guests celebrated in the synagogue’s reception hall.

The couple sat at the head table with their parents. Both were the last of their siblings to get married and so they held a special recognition ceremony for their mothers, placing a crown of flowers on each of their heads.

“It was a 100-degree day and the air conditioner was not working, so there was a lot of sweating,” Warren remembers with a laugh.

The two honeymooned for a week on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, then settled into Salem Harbor Apartments in Bensalem.

In 1975, when Millie was pregnant with their oldest child, Jordan, Warren realized something was wrong. Doctors found he had a stomach mass the size of a grapefruit, and an experienced surgeon suspected it was cancerous. “Thank God, it wasn’t,” Millie said. But the surgery had a long recovery and ended Warren’s basketball career.

“We just kept thinking about the little baby that was on the way,” Warren said. “We didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl, but we would sit with our dog, Oscar, and talk together about names and focus on the future.”

“Warren is a glass half-full person, while I tend to look on the downside at first,” Millie said. “It takes me awhile to get positive, and he helps me get there. It’s one of the things I love about him.”

Warren made a full recovery, and the couple later welcomed a second son, Marc, and a daughter, Elizabeth.

Warren built a career as a sports performance coach, working with more than 600 clients from teens to elite professional athletes. In 2012, he wrote a book, They’re Not Boys: Safely Training the Adolescent Female Athlete.

When the children were young, Millie was home with them while Warren worked, just as she wished. Saturdays were when Warren got to focus on the kids. “You’re at home all week – spend some time having fun,” he would tell Millie.

When the children became more independent, Millie launched a career in administration, becoming the assistant to the library director at what is now Arcadia University.

In 2003, Warren’s career took the family west, and they settled near Thousand Oaks, Calif. Millie became the administrative assistant to the athletic director at California Lutheran University.

The couple moved back to Pennsylvania in December 2019. They live in Willow Grove. She is administrative assistant to the principal at Keith Valley Middle School in the Hatboro-Horsham School District. He is semiretired, but continues to write and blog about sports performance rooted in evidence-based research.

The couple love spending as much time as possible with their family, which has grown.

Jordan lives in D.C. with his husband, Adam, and their dog, Bean. Marc and his wife, Shayna, live in San Diego with their three children, Ethan, 14, Bella, 12, and Haley, 10. Elizabeth lives locally so the couple enjoys seeing her and her dogs, Moses and Mabel, every week.

In June, Warren and Millie will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. The entire family will be in town, and will meet with a photographer. “All that Millie has ever wanted is a family portrait, and that will happen while everyone’s in town,” Warren said.

There’s a lot to celebrate, the couple agrees: kids and grandkids they are proud of, and grand dogs, too. Warren will toast Millie’s heart of gold and the contentment she’s brought to their life together. Millie still loves the way he hugs her.

“When Millie and I were first engaged, I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if we made it to 50 years?’ ” Warren said. “That seems like yesterday, but now here we are.”