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Mr. and Mrs. Robert Biery celebrate 75th anniversary

Robert A. and Laura Belle (Wack) Biery celebrate their 75th wedding anniversary on Dec. 1, 2020. The couple was married on a cold and windy Dec. 1, 1945 at the Washington National Cathedral in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit in Washington D.C. They were high school sweethearts, attending Goshen High School in Damascus.

Bob was in the Navy, assigned to Indian Head Naval Base in Maryland, where they mixed and canned gun powder for all branches of the U.S. military. After his stint there, he was assigned to the Arlington Navel Warehouse in Alexandria, Va. The couple lived at 1440 Rhode Island Ave. in D.C. and received a subsistence of $105 a month from the Navy while living off base.

The couple talked with the pastor in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit, who agreed to marry them there. Laura’s brother, John Wack, and Bob’s sister, Helen (Biery) Burkey, traveled to the capitol to stand in as sponsors for the couple. Bob was age 20. Laura was 18.

After the wedding ceremony the couple and their sponsors dined at the Blue Mirror Dinner Club. The restaurant boasted “The newest and most attractive place in the Nation’s Capitol – music on a merry-go-round and a million mirrors” where the band played on a rotating platform. After the wedding dinner the couple and their sponsors walked across the Washington Bridge, which they joke was their honeymoon.

The newlyweds attended church regularly at the First Christian Church on DuPont Circle. The couple once worshiped there with General of the Army, Omar Bradley.

While Bob continued his Navy service, Laura worked at the corporate headquarters of the Equitable Life Insurance Company in the nation’s capitol. When Bob was discharged from the Navy at the end of WWII, the couple first moved back home and purchased a house in Beloit, where they lived for several years before returning to Goshen Township where both had grown up and lived there until moving to Alliance to live with eldest son, Richard, in August of 2019.

Bob and Laura have five sons, Richard (and partner Randy), John (and wife Barbara), Jeff (and wife Karen), Chuck (and wife Denise) and Ted (and Honey Dog).

The couple also has nine grandchildren, 24 great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren.

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