BOCA RATON — “It’s not just a story,” Jeanne Swerlin said. “It’s a fabulous love story.”
In a week where the world marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day, Jeanne married Harold Terens in France. She’ll be 97 in December. Harold turns 101 in August.
“Oh my gosh. Who ever thought that at 96 years old I would have a wedding like this? And to this guy,” Jeanne said in the family room of her home west of Boca Raton.
“I only knew one (French) word,” she said. “When they said, ‘Do you take him?’ I said, ‘OUI!”
Harold was one of several D-Day-era survivors in attendance in France in June. There’s no official number on how many are left. This was his fourth anniversary event. He was there for the 50th, 70th, and 75th anniversaries too.
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“I plan on going to the 85th!” he said.
Jeanne: “Me, too!”
Harold said a friend at the French Consulate in Miami had suggested that while they were at the 80th anniversary event in France, they get married there. Combining their upcoming nuptials with an international event made for uncommon opportunities for the couple who met three years ago.
The ceremony was at the town hall in Carentan-les-Marais, just 20 miles inland and site of a bloody 6-day battle.
The two also were invitees at a state dinner in Paris, with President Joe Biden and French president Emmanuel Macron.
“They all stood and applauded us as we came in,” Jeanne said.
Later in the dinner, Harold said, he felt arms around his shoulder. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told him, “At this point, you and Jeanne are the most popular people in the world.”
The couple honeymooned in France, getting home June 18.
Harold said, “We were treated like royalty. Some women came over to me and kissed me like I was the pope. And cried.”
Harold was a 19-year-old from the Bronx when he enlisted in 1942. A year later, he was in England, maintaining radios for a P-47 Thunderbolt fighter unit. On D-Day, he said, he'd bidden the squadron pilots goodbye as they left England. Some 30 of them, half of his squadron, were killed.
“That wave of sadness never left,” he said.
Twelve days after the landing, he was in France, helping ferry back Americans freed from POW camps.
“All of them were in bad psychological shape and emotional shape,” he said. He said captured Germans “were very young. Maybe 16 or 17. Hitler was at the bottom of the barrel.”
Harold managed to avoid combat with the retreating German army. But not by much.
“You could hear the shooting. You were close enough.”
Eleven months later, the Third Reich fell. Harold helped transport more American POWs.
For many American GIs, not just Jewish ones, the Nazis’ atrocities across Europe were personal. Harold included.
“I had family in Poland. Almost all of them were killed. My grandmother was machine-gunned on the streets of Warsaw. I didn’t find all this out until after the war.”
In 1948, he married Thelma. The couple had two daughters and a son, and eventually, eight grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. For four decades, Harold was vice president for merchandising and sales for a British distributor. He retired in 2006 and they moved to South Florida. Thelma died at 90 in 2018.
Jeanne, who grew up in Brooklyn, spent most of her life as “a professional mom.” She has three children, four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren — with two more on the way.
She was widowed twice. She’d moved to Florida at 67 with her second husband. After he too died, she lived for years in the Boca Pointe neighborhood with a retired engineer. When he died about four years ago, Jeanne got to stay in the home. That last connection also put her on an unexpected path to meet Harold.
It turns out that years earlier, the engineer's grown daughter had sent her children to a summer camp — the same camp that some of Harold’s grandchildren attended. The mom introduced Jeanne and Harold in July 2021.
One day, Harold said, “I met her in the garage and went on one knee.”
Jeanne: “I was afraid he wouldn’t be able to get up!”
The two are keeping their respective homes — Harold’s is in the Willow Bend neighborhood west of Lake Worth Beach.And the two commute to be together.
Jeanne said, “The two families are so delicious. My daughter calls him ‘Papa.” And she’s 72!”
Harold says the secret to long life is learning how to minimize stress. Jeanne smiles when the question is turned to her. “I’m not going to tell you!” A laugh. Another droll smile. “It wouldn’t be a secret.”
Eliot Kleinberg is a retired Palm Beach Post reporter and author of War in Paradise: Stories of Florida in World War II.
