Weathering life's storms

COEUR d’ALENE — People remember a lot of things about their wedding day. The vows, the setting, the minister.

Cliff Harris remembers the weather.

“It was windy,” Coeur d’Alene's climatologist said of March 23, 1961, the date he and wife Sharon were married in a small Baptist church in Caldwell. “Partly cloudy, windy southwesterly winds, a little bit of rain in the morning, but not any more than five-hundredths.”

Sharon remembers something else: Cliff had the measles and wasn’t feeling well.

She was suspicious he was faking.

“Cliff tried to get out of it,” she said, smiling.

“Well, I was running a fever, like 103 degrees,” said Cliff as he sat in a chair in the living room of their comfortable Player Drive home.

Their two poodles, Sholeh and Genny, are relaxing on the carpet.

“I didn’t believe him,” responded Sharon, sitting nearby. “I thought he was trying to get out of it.”

He wasn't, and they exchanged vows.

"Best decision I ever made,” Cliff said.

To celebrate, they went to a Robert Mitchum movie that night, though they couldn't agree on the title.

Then, it was a Greyhound bus ride back home to Pittsburg, Calif., to begin life together. He was 18. She was 16. The reason they ran off to Caldwell to get hitched was because Cliff’s dad refused to sign off.

“I couldn’t get married in California, I needed to be 21 and my dad wouldn’t give his permission,” Cliff said.

Sixty years later, they’re still together — though Sharon admits Cliff wasn’t exactly the easiest man to live with early on. Or even later on, for that matter.

“He was very regimented and set in his ways, he was the most difficult person to get along with,” she said. “A good year, it took, after a lot of tears, things started working out. He’s bullheaded. He liked to control things, so that’s been a hard thing. I did a lot of praying sometimes when things were tough.”

Cliff, 78, suffered a broken back in a fall two months ago and recently spent several days in Kootenai Health battling a life-threatening infection. He quickly praises his 76-year-old wife.

“She’s been my rock. Going through all of this in the last two months, I couldn’t have made it without her,” he said. “I mean, it was not fun.”

Today, Cliff says it’s their “bedrock of faith” that sustained them through the decades as the winds took them to San Jose, Calif., Kalispell, Mont., Coeur d’Alene and Vermont before finally depositing them back in Coeur d’Alene.

“We get a problem, we go to the Lord,” he said. “We don’t always agree. There are a lot of things we don’t agree on.”

Like what?

“I’m a workaholic,” he answered. “She’s always trying to get me to slow down.”

“I worked today even though I was hurting like crazy,” he added.

While Cliff has been in the weather business almost as long as he’s been alive, and has long been the go-to guy for The Press, he’s been in commodities for 55 years and has clients across the Midwest and Southwest.

“They depend on me to tell them where to get in on the commodities, where to buy the corn and the beans, and more importantly, when to sell,” he said.

The two easily banter back and forth, with Cliff doing most of the talking, as they recount their early years.

They met at Pittsburg High School. Cliff was in the church youth group, too, and led the music. He had no money and no car.

“He had a bike, though,” Sharon said.

Sharon remembered how, on their first dates, he made her laugh with his jokes.

“But then he kept telling those same jokes again, then they weren’t very funny,” she said, smiling as Cliff grinned.

Their first apartment was $49 a month in the seedy part of Pittsburg.

“It was quite a place,” Cliff said. “Peeping Toms and all that.
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They didn’t have a phone, so calls had to be made from a phone booth around the corner. Those calls included some to police by Sharon to report fighting neighbors.

Cliff worked at Safeway, then was a press operator making construction pads, while Sharon finished high school.

“Hot work, 140 degrees around those presses,” he said proudly. “They paid well. I mean, I got $6 an hour, back when that was a lot of money.”

But weather was Cliff’s calling. He even kept a barometer on the wall above their bed.

“Tap it in the morning, tap it at night. That was his ritual,” Sharon said. “I thought it was a little strange. I knew he was different. I think that’s what attracted me. He was so different. He wasn’t like a lot of the guys at our school.”

They had two sons, Brian and Brent.

In the coming decades, Cliff’s weather career shined bright. He worked in TV, radio and newspapers forecasting, analyzing and recording Mother Nature’s handiwork — he has nearly 100 scrapbooks.

“I was pretty popular,” he said.

Cliff plans to retire from commodities, but will continue to provide weather information for The Press.

Asked what has kept them bonded for 60 years, Cliff says of Sharon, “I trust her. I think she’s the most honest person I’ve ever met.”

Sharon says Cliff is dependable, trustworthy and generous.

“He always makes sure I have whatever I need,” she said. “I know if I ask him for anything, if it’s possible, he’ll give it to me. He always kept his word."

While they would normally celebrate their anniversary with dinner at their favorite restaurant, Cedar’s, this year they enjoyed a quiet dinner at home.

“He can’t go out. He has trouble just getting up. I have to help him get up because he’s in a lot of pain,” Sharon said.

Cliff nods. A few minutes later, he stands, with Sharon's help, to pose for a photograph.

“I can depend on her. She’s my rock. I couldn’t have gone through these last eight weeks without her," he said. "They were the toughest of my life, by far. I didn’t even know if I was going to live.”

As they have for six decades, as predictable as the dawning of each day, they will weather life’s storms together.