February 12, 2001
Buffalo gal treasures husband's love through tough times
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___BUFFALO--Don Yeates spent 31 years working for NASA, but he still hasn't seen anything as out of this world as his wife, Peggy.
___The couple's first date was Halloween 1961. They went to a party at Huntington Baptist Church in Huntington, where typical Halloween things were in place in the rooms. The church also had secured a coffin and placed a dummy in it.
___Yeates thought that to be a little tame, however. So he slipped outside, climbed through a window and quietly took the place of the dummy.
DON AND PEGGY YEATES on the porch of their Buffalo home.
___"Every time I heard somebody moving around in the room, I would raise the lid of the coffin and raise up. The girls would scream and scream," he recalled.
___The memorable first date became even more memorable when the mother of one of the girls attending the party decided to check on things. After finding the doors locked, she walked around the building and eventually found the same window Yeates had used and climbed through.
___"When I raised up, I thought she was going to have a heart attack," he recalled. "She screamed and screamed. I didn't think she was ever going to stop. I felt bad, but it was funny at the same time."
___Despite this scary start to their relationship, Mrs. Yeates kept dating her future husband. Their dates primarily were spent at the cinema.
___They were married July 20, 1962, in a small ceremony at the same church where they had their first date.
___"That's an important date in history, because seven years later, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon on that date. I know. I was at work," recalled Yeates, who worked in a group that supplied cameras for the space flights.?
___In time, the Yeateses had two children, and life together was as enjoyable as it had been from the first date. In 1983, however, Mrs. Yeates was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
___"That was such a hard thing, especially accepting it," he said. "After the diagnosis, we read everything we could get our hands on, and we just became more depressed. We went through a very hard time dealing with the reality of it, and finally we determined we just couldn't deal with it. God had to deal with it for us. We turned it over to him."
___Even then, dark times still resurfaced.
___"I can't imagine what I would have done if God hadn't been with us. I probably would have had a nervous breakdown at least," he said. "Especially in the early stages, I got pretty stressed out. But each time we ran up against an obstacle, God has led us. He's provided for us. He's a great God."
___While many people who are diagnosed with MS go through periods of remission and experience brief times of improvement, Mrs. Yeates never has experienced that. Instead, she has gotten progressively worse.
___But that has not kept them from being active in church.
___"Even though her physical condition has steadily deteriorated, our spiritual condition has grown," he said. "We know that God is in charge, and he has always given us the strength to get through whatever we've needed to get through. She's still getting worse, but I'm still praying for healing--I'm not giving up on that."
___The Yeateses were members of the choir at University Baptist Church in Clear Lake when she was diagnosed. Even after she could no longer walk, she continued to sing in the choir.
___"The choir loft was only a couple of steps, and that wasn't any big deal. I could carry her up there with no problem," he said. "The rehearsal room was on the second floor, though, and there were 20 steps. I know. I counted them many times."
___He carried her up those steps weekly until one day when he stumbled carrying her out of the choir loft. His heel caught the bottom step, and they fell. Neither was badly hurt, but he was afraid to carry her up so many stairs to the rehearsal room after that.
___Eventually, Yeates took early retirement to help care for his wife full-time. They already had picked out a 22-acre tract of land south of Buffalo for their retirement home.
___And now they believe God has led them to a wonderful church home at First Baptist Church of Buffalo.
___"It's a caring group of people. They've done a lot to accommodate us," he said.
___Yeates recalled that the pastor met them in the parking lot after the first service they attended. They told him they enjoyed the service and had found the people very friendly. The curb surrounding the parking lot created a problem for Peggy's wheelchair, however.
___"He told us to give him a chance to work on that. We came back the next week, and there was a ramp. We couldn't do anything else but go back," Yeates explained.
___Soon, several of the members had convinced Mrs. Yeates to join the choir, and her husband carried her the few steps into the choir loft each week.
___"By that time, she had reached the place where she had trouble sitting in a chair that didn't have arms, but the next thing we knew, their was a chair sitting up their with arms on it. They have just been wonderful to us," he said.
___The Yeateses also have given back to the church. He served as interim music director for eight months. Together, they also started a couples' class for older adults last year. That class has grown from three couples to 10. Now he is developing his church's website.
___Yeates remains convinced, however, that his first priority is caring for his wife.
___"The mission in life that God has given me is to take care of Peggy," he said. "All these other things--being a Sunday School teacher, a deacon or whatever--they are all secondary. The primary thing a husband does is take care of his family."
___In his mind, it all goes back to what happened in that little church in Huntington nearly 40 years ago. Not just at Halloween, but at the marriage altar.
___"If you build your relationship on faith in God, it will endure," he said. "When we got married, we took a vow that included 'in sickness and in health.' I still believe in that, and I think God has honored that."
___
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