Stories

He’s 94, She’s 98 And They Just Got Married

After the wedding ceremony, Mr. Mann managed to sneak out the back door and, minutes later, pulled up in front of City Hall, behind the wheel of his red Toyota Corolla. As the guests began spilling out of City Hall and onto the sidewalk, Alvin stepped on the gas pedal and zoomed past them down the street, noisily dragging the traditional soda cans tied to the back bumper right below a sign that read “Just Married.” He took the car for a ride around the block before turning around to pick up his new wife.

“From here on out it’s just the two of us, together, for the remaining days of our lives,” the groom said when asked about their plans after marriage. Credit Justin Gilliland/The New York Times

Mr. Mann is orginally from Manchester, New Hampshire. He was born there on May 24, 1923. His parents were Mae Mann and Hyman Mann. Alvin joined the war in 1943 as a 19-year-old, eventually to serve as a second engineer aboard cargo ships, tankers and troop ships throughout the duration of World War II.

“It was a scary time,” he claimed. “There were other ships sinking all around us. I was one of the lucky ones who was able to come home.”

While he was already married by the time he was honorably discharged in 1947, he opened a business in the big apple entitled Temporary Office Services Inc. The purpose of the company was to provide short-term secretarial and clerical aid to other businesses.

In 1960, Mr. Mann, who claimed he “could never stand living in the city,” bought a country home in Cuddebackville, in the depths of the Catskill Mountains, which he prefers to call “a little piece of heaven.”

Mr. Mann’s first marriage, which lasted 20 years before tragically collapsed in a divorce, generated his only biological child, Mark Mann, who is now 71. Mark served as his father’s best man.

Alvin’s second marriage, to Maybelle Kart, who was an art historian and also an artist from Great Neck, N.Y., who had two daughters, thrived for 45 years until her passing in 2007.

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