Jubilee of Anniversariers
Couple’s faith strengthened them through deaths of three children

By Tim Puet
Catholic Times Reporter

Bernard and Jane Paumier say their faith has been central to their lives throughout 72 years of marriage, particularly sustaining them as they mourned the deaths of three of their six children.

“Our lives have been based on following Catholic teaching, and we think it’s made a great difference,” said Bernard, familiarly known as Bernie. “No one wants to bury their child, and we’ve had to do it three times. 

“We’ve been supported through those losses by the priests and people in Roswell (New Mexico), where our son Michael struggled for life until he died at 6 months old in 1952, and at (Buckeye Lake Our Lady of) Mount Carmel Church after our daughter Suzanne Woodside’s death in 2017 and the loss of our son Joe in March.”

Both of the adult children were 67 when they died – Suzanne at her home in Ford City, Pennsylvania and Joe at the Ohio State University’s Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital.
The couple’s three other children are Daniel, in his early 70s, of Lancaster; Catherine Domanski, 66, who lives near the family farm in Fairfield County; and Thomas, 65, who lives in South Carolina. 

Bernie, 93, grew up on a farm in Louisville, Ohio, in Stark County. Jane, 94, is from Canton, about 8 miles from Louisville. Although they lived in neighboring communities, they met in the late 1940s in Roswell, New Mexico, about 1,500 miles from their respective hometowns.

Bernie had joined the Air Force, then known as the Army Air Corps, after graduating from Louisville High School in 1946 and was stationed in Roswell as a radio operator on B-29 airplanes for the 509th Bombardment Group. In July 1947, Roswell gained fame as the site of the first widely reported crash of a possible unidentified flying object.

“The 509th dropped the atomic bombs that ended World War II and was still a highly classified outfit at that time because it was the group that would drop the bomb if it ever were used again, so we thought anything was possible,” he said when asked about responses to the incident.

Jane had graduated from Canton McKinley High School and the nursing school at Aultman Hospital in Canton when she came to Roswell in 1948  to work at St. Anthony Hospital as a cadet nurse – part of a nonmilitary arm of the U.S. Public Health Service that existed from 1943 to 1948. 

“Jane was good-looking and from near my hometown, and when I met her, she was wearing a fur coat and making $10 a day, which was pretty good money then,” Bernie said. “All of that impressed me.”

The couple were married in a Catholic church in Roswell on April 28, 1949. Two days later, Bernie was called to serve overseas – something that happened frequently for the next several years. 

“This was during the Cold War, so our group was called to serve a lot of 90-day assignments in various hot spots,” Bernie said. During the six years they spent together at Roswell, five of the couple’s children were born. Michael died during this period, but Bernie was overseas at the time.

“This was probably the hardest period in our marriage,” Jane said. “In those days, you couldn’t just fly across the country the way you can now, so I was living by myself for a while, then with a growing family. But we both understood Bernie’s group had a mission, and unexpected call-ups were part of it.”

In 1955, Bernie was assigned to the former Ramey Air Force Base in Puerto Rico, where the couple and their children spent the next four years, and Bernie flew on B-36s. 

“It seemed the Puerto Ricans believed Americans were all Protestants, rich and had two children. Being Catholic, not rich and with five kids, we didn’t fit that image,” he said. “What was important was that we were willing to adapt. We learned Spanish, ate the local food and had a wonderful time there. Puerto Rico is also where our youngest child, Thomas, was born.”

Bernie’s final transfer occurred in 1959 when he was sent to the former Lockbourne Air Force Base (now Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base) in Columbus, where he was a boom operator on KC-135s, which specialized in aircraft-to-aircraft in-flight refueling of bombers and fighter planes. He spent eight years at Lockbourne, retiring from the military in 1967.

Two of his sons also had long Air Force careers, with Daniel spending 30 years and Joe 24 years in that branch of the service, while Thomas was part of the USAF for two years.    
“I left the Air Force because I was in my late 30s and didn’t want to re-enlist,” Bernie said. “I used the GI Bill to attend Ohio State University while doing odd jobs. I was eating lunch there one day and learned there were openings for substitute teachers in Perry County at a rate of $20 a day.

“The county superintendent asked me why I didn’t try to become a full-time teacher, and I told him I never liked the first day of school and didn’t have a college degree. He said four school superintendents in the county were looking for teachers, and lack of a degree wouldn’t be a problem if I was making progress toward one. I obtained a degree in education and was hired by the Northern Local School District in 1970 to teach 42 third- and fourth-graders at Thornville Elementary School.

“I was ready to quit on the first day,” he said. “But I got through because we didn’t follow the usual classroom rules. I was a rebel, and maybe some of the stuff I did would get me in jail today. We got the work done we were supposed to, but I allowed the kids to have fun. We played pranks on each other, and sometimes the whole class was in on a prank on me. 

“It was a joyful atmosphere, yet they were learning. I remember one day when I went to the middle school, and a girl who used to be in one of my classes saw me walking through the halls and slipped out of the room to say hello to me. The next thing you know, word got out that ‘Mr. Paumier’s here,’ and a dozen kids were doing the same thing and telling me how much they’d learned in my classes. That’s always been a fond memory.”

Bernie taught two grades for two years and then was a fourth-grade teacher at Thornville Elementary until retiring in 1990. The Paumiers’ son Joe followed in his father’s footsteps in having long careers in both the military and the teaching profession, following his 24 years in the Air Force by serving as a substitute teacher in New Mexico and Texas and, for the past 15 years, in Fairfield County schools.

Bernie and Jane lived in Reynoldsburg for their first three years in central Ohio and were founding members of Reynoldsburg St. Pius X Church. 

“Jane decided to join the Catholic Church while we were at St. Pius,” Bernie said. “She received instructions in the faith from Father (Andrew) Hohman (the church’s founding pastor) and others. One of the reasons I knew she was someone special was because she regularly went to Mass with me and the children and always took them to Mass while I was overseas. She was the best ‘non-Catholic Catholic’ I ever knew.”   

The family soon realized it needed more space than was available in its Reynoldsburg home and began looking for a larger house. After about two years of searching, they saw a newspaper ad saying a 38-acre farm near Baltimore in northern Fairfield County was available for $10,000.

“We saw it in April of 1962 – a big brick house on a hill overlooking a covered bridge over Poplar Creek – and we said, ‘That’s it,’” Bernie said. “It had no plumbing or heat, with one inside light bulb. We roughed it for the first couple of years and are still roughing it somewhat, but we’re happy here.”

The house was built in the 1830s or ’40s by members of the pioneer Tussing family, whose identity is well-known in Pickerington and surrounding communities because one of the area’s main roads and an elementary school bear the family’s name. 

Bernie said the house was built next to a log cabin. Civil War soldiers were recruited on the home’s front porch, and the existence of a hidden room under a stairway suggests the possibility that it was an Underground Railroad site. Many arrowheads and other artifacts, including a cannonball, have been found on the land and in the creek.  

The Paumiers named the land Crooked Creek Farm and grow sweet corn and other vegetables for sale at a stand they operate in front of the farm, which does some advertising and has a growing mailing list of people who are informed when the corn is available. Bernie and Jane still do most of the work on the farm, with the help of a granddaughter and her husband.

The couple are members of Buckeye Lake Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, where Bernie taught catechism for many years, and have been attending Eucharistic Adoration at Pickerington St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish each Wednesday for the past 20 years. 

Bernie also has been a longtime member of the Fairfield County Literacy Council, using the knowledge of Spanish he picked up in Puerto Rico to help immigrants obtain U.S. citizenship. He also writes letters to residents of nursing homes and to prisoners and answers children’s letters to Santa Claus, telling the children that one of the greatest gifts a person can give  is a compliment, which is free and lasts a lifetime.  

“In general, we get along pretty well,” Jane said. when asked if the couple had any advice for married couples.  “After 72 years, you have no choice,” s    he added with a smile.

“I would say couples need to remember two words: sacrifice and options,” Bernie said. “Couples always have to sacrifice for each other. We had to sacrifice some things to move here, but it was the best thing for us. 

“Of course, the loss of three children was a big sacrifice, but we accepted it and continued. Jane was a city girl, and I grew up on a farm,” Bernie said. “When I bought this land, everything about it was new to her, and accepting that change was a sacrifice, but she took to it like a duck to water.

“As far as options, it’s more that there are certain things which have no options. As far as going to Mass, we gave our children no option but to attend. On the farm, we all had to work hard. You had no option. We also had to take care of each other. That’s not an optional thing. This may seem to make life more difficult, but when we’ve faced hard times, it’s made us stronger.

“In general, our marriage has been an exciting and challenging journey. We don’t know of much we’d change,” he said, concluding with a message to Catholic Times readers: “Que Dios te bendiga” – Spanish for “God bless you.”