In a 1947 Chicago suburb, a female lifeguard showed a young man just back from two years in the Navy how to do a reverse dive into the community pool. Now, the two are celebrating 65 years of marriage and the 12 children, 39 grandchildren, and 18 great-grandchildren their family has grown to include.
“She was a lifeguard, and I was a young macho man trying to show off,” Bud Vear, a Hillsdale resident, said. “That was where it started.”
Though the dive was a flop, the pair went out to O’Henry’s Dance Hall and spent the evening dancing with friends. It wasn’t until nearly two years later that the two began dating, but they immediately made a connection.
“By the second date, we were talking about getting married,” Gloria Vear ’82 said. “We just knew it was supposed to be.”
Less than a year later, they did just that, beginning their life together in a humble apartment with only $50 to their name.
Even after he had started a career in social work and later, education, Bud Vear’s longtime dream of becoming a doctor never completely left him. Although he completed pre-med studies as an undergraduate student, he decided to pursue other work when the flood of veterans going to school through the GI bill made medical school applications extremely competitive.
After seven years of teaching middle school science and math, Vear decided medicine wasn’t something he could put aside.
“I never could totally shake the dream of being a doctor,” Bud Vear said. “One August evening, we had eight children, we were sitting out on the front porch, and I said, ‘I’d like to see if I can get into medical school,’ and Gloria said, ‘What? How are we going to feed the kids?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know, but I’d hate to die with my dream in me.’ Once she knew I was serious, then she started planning.”
Gloria Vear went to beauty school, spending 1,000 hours in class to obtain her beautician license. She planned to open a home beauty parlor in the first floor of their house near the University of Missouri, where her husband was accepted to medical school after the pair did an admissions interview together.
“I say this glibly, but it’s more accurate than glib,” Bud Vear said. “I think they were so impressed with her, that they figured, ‘He can’t be that bad, we should let him in.’ I think they admitted her and I came in on her coattails.”
As Bud Vear entered what he described as the hardest four years of his life academically, the Vears had to fight a second battle to get their home beauty parlor approved by the city’s zoning commission.
“We went through hell and back because once we were accepted, we bought the house, planned on renting out rooms to college students, and they told us we couldn’t have a home beauty shop,” Gloria Vear said. “We had to fight city hall.”
After three failed votes, the city approved the beauty parlor by a narrow margin, and Gloria Vear opened shop, helping support the family as her husband finished his studies.
“He would ride his bicycle to class, but he’d always come home at dinnertime, eat dinner, tuck us in bed, and then go back and study in the library,” their daughter, Terry Vear, said.
Bud Vear credits his wife for helping keep the family together during his time in medical school.
“She likes challenges. She’s the eternal optimist,” he said. “Without her optimism, without her, it wouldn’t have happened.”
After Vear graduated and completed medical internships, he moved his family to Hillsdale, Michigan, where he opened a private medical practice and served as a physician for Hillsdale College’s health center for 25 years.
Gloria Vear also completed her education at Hillsdale College, graduating with 164 credit hours, a degree in psychology and English with teaching certification, and a 3.49 GPA — a higher GPA than any of her children who went to Hillsdale.
Amid raising 12 children, she worked her way toward graduation, taking a course each semester.
“The professors allowed me to tape all the classes, because I could listen to the tapes again as I was doing laundry or other chores,” she said.
There was no shortage of activity in the Vear home, which had expanded to 14 people plus the constant stream of neighborhood kids and family friends who came to visit.
“We always had people at our house,” Terry Vear said. “We took in exchange students. Our house was the local hangout Friday night after the football games because we had a pool table and a Ping-Pong table.”
At dinner, the family would sit on long benches, where they would go around the table seeing who could remember the most presidents or state capitals.
“Anything to keep them at the table for a few extra minutes,” Bud Vear said.
Outside of their household, the Vears helped found the Alpha Omega Care Center at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, volunteered at the Sauk Theatre, and helped lead Hillsdale Right to Life.
Looking back, Gloria Vear said her faith in God and a positive attitude helped her and her husband get through the tough times.
“It’s so important to understand one another, and to laugh a lot, and to see funny things rather than crises all the time, and not to yell,” Gloria Vear said.
From their lively household came an abundance of memories, and every four years, the extended family — all 220 of them, including Bud Vears’ brothers and their families — get together for “Vear Fest,” a weekend of reminiscing and spending time together.
“I don’t think that they realize the impact they have on everybody,” their granddaughter, junior Taylor Hannel, said. “If I can be a fraction of the person that they are, I would have lived excellently … My grandparents set a really high standard of what family should look like.”