Hillsboro High School graduates Dr. Mary Lou and John Patton have announced their 50th wedding anniversary.
The were married on Dec. 27, 1971, in Manhattan, New York.
Mary Lou graduated from Hillsboro in 1965 and John graduated from Hillsboro in 1963.
They both grew up locally and attended school in the Marshall and Hillsboro schools and retain roots in the community with relatives of the Cummings, Grover, Patton and Mercer families, and ownership of the Cummings-Patton-Moerman Farm in the Marshall community. The farm was established by Mary Lou’s grandfather, Ferris Cummings, in 1905. The Moerman name addition came from daughter Nickie and husband Pieter Moerman, and their sons John Lane and Jacob William, who live in Huntington Beach, California.
Mary Lou continues in her 38th year in practice as a general surgeon at Crozer Chester Medical Center and as medical director of the Nathan Speare Regional Burn Center in Upland, Pennsylvania. She completed serving 35 years as the Crozer director of the breast program and National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers (NAPBC).
John retired as a director and corporate officer of Metrologic Instruments, while previously being in personnel and labor relations management at Sheller Globe Toledo, Oral B Laboratories Iowa City, and TRW Philadelphia.
“We might add they enjoyed reading local happenings and reporting in The Times Gazette including advertisements for Cummings Farm Supply and Patton’s Farm Dairy in years past, and also including their wedding announcement,” John Cummings said in the anniversary anouncement.
For their anniversary, they greeted friends at an informal event in Wallingford, Pennsylvania.
When their marriage was announced in the then Press Gazette in the early 1970s, Mary Lou, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Paul E. Cummings of Marshall, was a 1968 graduate of the Springfield City Hospital School of Nursing. Between then and her marriage she was employed at Columbus Presbyterian Medical Center and was attending Columbia University in New York, New York, with the exception of one year abroad studying at the University of Paris, France.
John, the son of Mr. and Mrs. James C. Patton of Hillsboro, had graduated from Eastern Kentucky University in 1968. He taught in the Hillsboro City Schools before taking a position as a teacher and head football coach at Symmes Valley High School. The couple was residing in South Point, Ohio, at the time.
Submitted by John Patton.
