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Their secret?
“She speaks for me,” Walter Shelest, 87, said of his beloved wife Marilyn, 84.
Marilyn smiled serenely.
There’s a lot of give and take and each has the utmost respect for the other. They each found that special someone that is like minded and each defers to the other with a great deal of care and consideration, Fran Shelest said of her brother Walter and sister-in-law Marilyn.
“They are quite content, they don’t need big stuff, their lives are very very simple and they’re very compatible,” Fran said.
Walter was born in
He’s lived here all his life and only moved away for work in Kitimat on the Kemano project where he met Marilyn.
She had come from
The pair married in 1956 and Walter brought his bride back to
Walter and Marilyn spent the rest of their lives here raising their family, working and volunteering, building deep roots in the community.
The Shelests have three daughters: Lenna, Cindy and Lissa.
Lenna lives in Comox, Cindy lives in Parksville and Lissa lives in
“We are over the moon about them all,” Marilyn said. “We are truly blessed. After raising our three beautiful daughters they blessed us with these wonderful grandchildren and great-grandchild and our lives revolve around them all.”
As for their working life, Walter worked for R.F. Klein Contractors and later went on to start a small plumbing business of his own. He expanded and took on the Aqua Soft Water Conditioning service installing water conditioning equipment, water treatments and water filtration systems, along with many other jobs and development properties he’s owned.
Marilyn worked as a secretary for the school board and retired after 27 years of service. She first worked at the Connaught Jr. secondary school until 1971 and then at Lakewood Jr. secondary.
“I enjoyed my work and I always considered it a wonderful job,” Marilyn said. “I worked with great people and I loved the kids. It still makes my day when students stop to say hello because they remembered me from their school days.”
Walter was elected as a
Over the years, Walter volunteered for the Prince George Junior Chamber of Commerce Jaycees and served as the local president and later as the district president for northern B.C.
Working beside him, Marilyn volunteered her time with the Jayceettes.
As the couple has gotten older and things have slowed down so much because of the pandemic and the restrictions around socializing the pair has kept to themselves lately. There’s many phone calls to stay in touch with friends and to keep busy they go out into their beautiful yard to spend time together maintaining it.
“We go for a lot of drives around town, driving by Walter’s parents’ old house and now because of covid shopping is an outing too,” Marilyn laughed. “We have a nice life.”
This year’s 65th wedding anniversary will be a low-key affair with family.
Walter and Marilyn are well respected in the community and are happy they will soon be able to see their friends once again and return to the Elder Citizen Recreation Centre when restrictions are lifted.
“My parents are so well liked in the community,” Cindy, their middle daughter, said. “Everywhere they go people stop to say hello. They’ve been a big part of
· with notes from Kathy Nadalin’s 2017 Seniors’ Scene column about the Shelests.
