David and Jane Morse, both 86, are a rare sort in Elk Grove these days. They are natives.
Their lives link the suburban bedroom community for which Elk Grove has come to be known to the folksy, agricultural-based town it once was.
The couple once lived on the farm that David Morse's grandfather bought 150 years ago. They now live in a subdivision off Elk Grove Boulevard. An American flag hangs out front; their children's high school portraits hang in the foyer.
David Morse's Elk Grove roots date back three generations, when grandfather George Morse bought 840 acres along Bruceville Road, near Franklin, with money he earned hauling freight to silver mines up north.
The farm has long since given way to stoplights and strip malls, but David still talks about the land wistfully.
"I really wish it were like it used to be, where you could see all the way around you and all the way to the horizon," he said. "The fields were 6 inches to a foot high with grain. … You could see over to the mountains, see the sunset and sunrise."
Jane Morse was born on Kent Street, between Grove Street and Lark Avenue, in what is now referred to as Old Town. The house is still there, she said, built by her grandfather Jesse McClellan Derr.
"In fact, most of the old houses in Elk Grove were built by him," Jane said.
He founded the Derr Lumber Co., the only one for miles around for a long time.
The Morses remember a simpler time, when everybody knew everybody else. Speeding youths trying "to get bright with girls" got stern "talking-tos," not jail time back then, David said. The couple said going to Sacramento for a movie on a Saturday night was a big deal. Saturday night, mind you. Saturday was for work.
"It was just so friendly," Jane said. "We never locked doors."
"Now, we don't know anybody," she said, her hands neatly folded in her lap, nails painted a peachy color.
"It was homey, I guess you'd call it," David said. "Changes take place. It's what happens, and you adjust to it."
They each know something about personal resilience. Both David and Jane endured the Depression in single-parent homes. Their fathers had died tragically.
"It was rough," Jane said.
Her mother worked in Colton's Grocery to help feed the family. David, his siblings and their mother worked hard to keep the farm.
During World War II, David enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces. The couple married soon after, in 1943.
After fixing so many broken-down tractors on the family farm, David Morse ended up teaching Mather Field pilots about the planes they'd be flying and how the engines worked. He learned he wanted to be a teacher then.
When Sacramento State opened in 1947, David Morse was the first student to enroll. He earned a degree in education.
After a period spent teaching in Galt, he served as counselor at Elk Grove High School, his alma mater, from 1960 to 1984.
"I never met a student who didn't want to learn," David said. He said it was often the education model that didn't meet their needs. In 1974, he created a model for interactive, democracy-based learning called Triad Education that is still in use in the district.
Jane Morse was the first clerk of the Elk Grove Justice Court and worked as a bookkeeper for her family's lumber company. She spent the bulk of her career with the Elk Grove Convalescent Center, retiring as an administrative assistant in 1987.
She said she made it her mission to make sure longtime residents were placed first in the center and then, if there was space, the newcomers.
The Morses will be married 65 years on May 2. Their six-decade-long romance began under an oak tree that still stands on Elk Grove Boulevard.
Having grown impatient for Jane's response after asking her to a high school dance, David waited under the oak. He knew she passed under the tree on her walk to school.
"He asked me first, but I had been asked out by two other boys," Jane said.
"She knew I was the nicer guy," he said cheekily.
So, what's their secret?
"Whatever it is that binds you, that causes you to be together, is stronger than the things that take you apart," David said.
Call The Bee's Melissa Nix, (916) 478-2653.