Victor and Dee Alejandro won’t do anything elaborate for Valentine’s Day. Dee, short for Arldean, figures she’ll make Victor Sr. the rice and beans with ham hocks he loves, one of the meals his mom brought with her to Buffalo, from Puerto Rico.
Once they’re done, they’ll simply enjoy the evening at their little home in the hills of Allegany County, where they have lived in the town of Cuba since last November.
In their mid-70s, the meaning of this day is where they are.
“We loved each other,” Dee said, “and we made it work.”
Victor Sr. was only 3 when his parents arrived in Buffalo, from Puerto Rico. Dee Messer was the granddaughter of Irish immigrants. They met more than 60 years ago, when they attended Public School 4 on South Park Avenue.
Kids in those days walked home for lunch, though many went instead to a place called the Canteen. They say their courtship seemed unlikely: Dee remembers that she was an honors student. Victor Sr. said he had just gotten out of juvenile detention, sent there for doing a copper raid during construction along the railroad tracks.
Dee was hardly aghast. She knew plenty of kids who had gotten away with the same thing. They began kidding around at a soda fountain called Bill’s New Canteen, a youthful preface to dating. On Dec. 10, 1962, Victor Sr. showed up at her front door, his little brothers at his side.
He gave her a ring. “He asked if I’d go steady,” Dee said.
Today, at 75, they don’t forget the day and month.
Before long, Dee’s mom moved her seven kids into the Perry housing complex, where Victor Sr.’s family already lived. Their relationship grew more intense, and then changed their lives:
At 15, Dee learned she was pregnant.
Victor Sr. was taking vocational classes. Dee was at the old South Park High. Plenty of people had the same advice: Surrender your baby for adoption, and don’t get married.
They both had people close to them saying the Puerto Rican-Irish thing would…
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