Former US Senator Writes of His Love for His Wife of 48 Years, and His Upcoming Marriage to a Man

Iconic National Service Advocate and Former U.S. Senator Harris Wofford Announces He’s Getting Married, and Explains Why Love Is Love

Former U.S. Senator Harris Wofford is getting married again. In a powerful, moving, and beautiful New York Times Sunday op-ed, the Democrat who served Pennsylvania as its party chairman, Secretary of Labor and Industry, and U.S. Senator shares his story of love and marriage with his wife of 48 years, Claire, until her passing in 1996, and his impending nuptials to a man, his partner of 15 years, Matthew Charlton.

“At age 70, I did not imagine that I would fall in love again and remarry. But the past 20 years have made my life a story of two great loves,” Sen. Wofford writes.

“Clare and I fell in love trying to save the world during World War II,” Wofford says. “I had founded a student organization to promote a postwar union of democracies to keep the peace. When I left to serve in the Army Air Corps, Clare became national president, guiding the Student Federalists as the group grew across the country.”

In fact, as special assistant to President John F. Kennedy, Wofford was his chairman of the Subcabinet Group on Civil Rights, and is credited with assisting in the formation of the Peace Corps. He was also involved with then-Sentor Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign. His lost his Senate re-election bid in the wave that swept in a GOP majority, to Rick Santorum.

“We were both about to turn 70 when she died. I assumed that I was too old to seek or expect another romance,” he says, but five years later he met Matthew Charlton.

“As we talked, I was struck by Matthew’s inquisitive and thoughtful manner and his charm. I knew he was somebody I would enjoy getting to know. We were decades apart in age with far different professional interests, yet we clicked.”

“To some, our bond is entirely natural, to others it comes as a strange surprise, but most soon see the strength of our feelings and our devotion to each other. We have now been together for 15 years,” Wofford writes, and includes this Robert Frost poem:

And yet for all this help of head and brain

How happily instinctive we remain,

Our best guide upward further to the light,

Passionate preference such as love at sight.

“Twice in my life, I’ve felt the pull of such passionate preference,” he says. “At age 90, I am lucky to be in an era where the Supreme Court has strengthened what President Obama calls ‘the dignity of marriage’ by recognizing that matrimony is not based on anyone’s sexual nature, choices or dreams. It is based on love.”

“All this is on my mind as Matthew and I prepare for our marriage ceremony,” he concludes. “On April 30, at ages 90 and 40, we will join hands, vowing to be bound together: to have and to hold, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do us part.”

 

Image by Peace Corps via Flickr and a CC license