John and Ernestine Jenkins marked their 50th wedding anniversary just the way they had always wanted -- surrounded by friends and family.
With their years of service in the community through local organizations and John's position as the Democratic supervisor of the Neabsco District for nearly 26 years, the family figured the best way to do that would be with an open house.
The Dale City couple's three sons spent a year planning and coordinating the celebration and Saturday, the exact date of the Jenkins' anniversary, welcomed more than 100 people into the main hall of the Dale City Veterans of Foreign Wars post.
"We just wanted to rightly honor them," said Gordon Jenkins, the youngest of the couple's children.
Then 91-year-old Evelyn Weeks walked up and shook his hand.
"You have wonderful parents, the best," she said.
John, in a sharp dress suit, and Ernestine, in a floor-length red dress, stood at the door, took a break from greeting friends at one point to talk about how the two met 50 years ago in Geneva County, Ala.
The two didn't go to school together and, despite their parents knowing each other, were not acquainted.
That all changed at a high school football game.
After trying to sneak in with his buddies and then getting caught and paying his way in, John and his friends wound up sitting next to Ernestine and her family.
He wasn't the first to strike up a conversation with the high school junior, though. It was one of his friends, who John said had eyes for her and later introduced the two.
"Fortunately, I was more persuasive," John said.
The two were both 18 years old when they married. Together, the two have their sons, 14 grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren.
"I love him," Ernestine said. "He is my life."
Then their sons, Warren, Mark and Gordon, presented their parents with a gift several months in the making -- a video of family pictures from when John and Ernestine were growing up in Alabama, to their wedding day, to John's military tour in Turkey to now.
The video covered all the milestone events and everything in between.
Afterward, the couple did just as they had 50 years ago -- they cut into a beautiful cake, each feeding the other a bite.
Staff writer Elisa Glushefski can be reached at 703-878-8062.
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