Oct 17, 2014 5 min read

Love started on a double date when Don Williams met a young nursing student named Mary Lou at a Thursday night dance. That was more than 60 years and a lifetime ago.

Mary Lou soon learned the tall handsome man she loved, loved to make lists – lists for everything – and Don continues to record and often rank places and adventures the couple has taken.

Originally from the Philadelphia area, the Williams moved to Friendship Village in Upper St. Clair slightly more than two years ago to be closer to one of their two daughters and four of their six grandchildren.

Don Williams, 82, a chemical engineer with degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University, and Mary Lou, a registered nurse with a bachelor’s degree from West Chester University, love to travel almost as much as they love each other.

Over the years, the couple has visited all seven continents, including walking among 60,000 penguins in Antarctica – the trip they both agree was their favorite – to the time in 1998 when Don helped a young Maasai who was mauled by a lion in Amboseli National Park in Kenya.

They watched a whale mating ritual off the coast of Maine and rode mules to the top of Yosemite Falls in 1970. They’ve whitewater rafted in Alaska and, while in Africa, enjoyed a private breakfast with Jane Goodall where she discussed her efforts with chimpanzee conservation.

While living in Delaware, a new neighbor turned out to be a then unknown lawyer Joe Biden and his wife. While both men were running for political office in the 1970s, the two men would go door-to-door together seeking votes. Biden won his election. Don Williams lost by 383 for a seat on the New Castle County Council.

He even remembers he lost to a man who eventually was involved in an embezzlement scheme and fell from grace. The fact is on one of his lists.

There is one list Don Williams no longer has. It’s the one he kept when he was in high school outside Philadelphia where he ranked his girlfriends.

“I lined them up in preference,” he said.

“I hope you destroyed it,” his wife said as they sat close together on their living room couch.

“I didn’t know my wife at the time,” he said as he gently patted her hand.

Don Williams can trace his list making to his parents, particularly his mother. While his parents never flew on an airplane, the couple sailed to Europe, returning in August of 1929 where they saw newspaper headlines predicting a depression. The stock market crashed on Oct. 29, 1929.

Don and Mary Lou Williams married in 1955. He remembers he had to pay an extra 50 cents for the license because she was under the age of 21. They took an eight-week trip through Europe, including a stop in Berlin, which was still in East Berlin at the time. As a member of the U.S. Navy on leave, Don Williams remembers he had to have a Russian translation of his leave documents. The couple returned to Germany in 1998 as part of a church trip from Delaware. They always have current passports ready to go any where, any time.

When asked if there was one trip or adventure that was his least favorite, Don Williams was quick to reply, “None. I liked them all.”

Over the years, the couple has attended two Olympic events – summer and winter games – both in Canada.

They’ve climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Sydney, Australia, visited 17 major league baseball stadiums and watched sea turtles mate on the Galapagos Islands.

For Don Williams, the ultimate excitement on a trip is to watch a full solar eclipse. He’s seen four around the world, including his first, on the tip of the Delmarva Peninsula on March 7, 1970, that he viewed through welders’ glass. That fact is on one of his many lists. Mary Lou Williams is not as enthusiastic about solar eclipses but she does enjoy the trips. Don Williams has seen numerous lunar eclipses, but those he does not record.

“I’m really finicky about my eclipses,” he said.

The next total solar eclipse is in 2017 and may be visible from the east coast. The couple is already planning to be near the peak viewing area.

As for a bucket list, Don Williams admitted he doesn’t have one, with at least two exceptions. He’d really love to travel to Normandy in France, and he’s visited 49 of the 50 states, never having set foot in North Dakota.

Once, on a ski lift, he met a man from North Dakota and asked the man if there was anything interesting to see in the state. And when the man replied he couldn’t think of anything exciting, well, Don Williams decided he really didn’t need to visit.