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BANGOR — The bride wore a satin dress with at lest 65 buttons going down the back. It was a hot Saturday on June 30, 1946, when Janice (Swinerton) and Bill Deering exchanged their wedding vows at the bride’s church in South Waterboro. After their reception in the church basement, they began their married lives together honeymooning at Ossipee Lake, the White Mountains and then the Parker House in Boston.

In the fall with his GI Bill in hand, they went to Orono, where Bill received his degree in psychology.  After graduating he began his professional career with 25 years at the Bangor State Hospital and another 20 years in private practice. During those years he went to Boston University and received his doctorate in psychology and continued his military career as a reserve officer in the Army National Guard. There were many a summer when Bill and his fellow guardsmen would go to Fort Drum, N.Y., for two weeks of training and Janice would pack up the family, four kids, a few dogs and a friend or two, and follow the convoy. During those same years Janice was running their Bangor home, raising their family, managing their apartment buildings, buying and selling this and that, working for various independent research companies, and  together they have always found time to enjoy the different aspects of life, including friends, church, animals, boating and their Verona Island farm. The couple are longtime members of East Orrington Congregational Church.

For their 65th anniversary they again went to the Parker House in Boston, where they dined with some of their many children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The 1946 family of two now numbers in the mid-20s, and as Bill has said,-  “with no end in sight.”