Pineville Couple Finds Romance After Loss

RACHEL DICKERSON/MCDONALD COUNTY PRESS After knowing each other for a lifetime, Patsy Ward (left) and Ed Malcolm of Pineville have found romance together following the loss of their spouses. They are pictured next to some of the larger examples of wooden flowers that Malcolm makes.
RACHEL DICKERSON/MCDONALD COUNTY PRESS After knowing each other for a lifetime, Patsy Ward (left) and Ed Malcolm of Pineville have found romance together following the loss of their spouses. They are pictured next to some of the larger examples of wooden flowers that Malcolm makes.

A Pineville couple has found romance after both lost their spouses.

Ed Malcolm of Pineville has lived in McDonald County for 25 years. His wife of 56 years, Sharon, died a year and a half ago. Together they had four sons and three daughters. They grew up in Iowa and later lived in North Carolina, Tennessee and, finally, in McDonald County. Sharon was with Walmart for 17 years and retired 10 years ago. After she retired, she started having mini-strokes, Ed said. It took doctors eight years to figure out what was wrong.

Ed said Sharon suffered from a rare form of Parkinson's disease that only one in 80,000 people gets. He said over the course of a year, she went from 180 pounds down to 72 pounds right before she died. He said she did not lose her mental ability, but she did lose the ability to talk, which frustrated her. She was in the McDonald County Living Center for just four days short of a year when she died, Ed said.

Enter Patsy Ward. Patsy and Ed have known each other since fourth grade.

"I fell madly in love with this little girl the first time I met her," Ed said. Patsy said she had no clue.

Her family moved away and Ed did not see Patsy for a while. Then, when he was 16 and she was 14, he started seeing her at the roller rink. When she became old enough to date at 16, they dated for a summer.

"Then she met somebody else and I got kicked to the curb," Ed said.

They both married and went on with their lives. Patsy and Sharon were acquaintances. Wherever they moved, Ed and Sharon had always kept a subscription to their hometown newspaper in Iowa. About 15 years ago, they saw in the paper that Patsy's father had died. Sharon suggested that Ed get in touch with Patsy and see how she was doing. He did and talked to her for about an hour. Every year or so, Sharon would have him get in touch with Patsy. Seven or eight years ago on one of these phone calls, she said her husband was dying.

A year ago, Ed went to Iowa to see his grandchildren and he saw Patsy's brother. He said Patsy's husband had died and she had moved to Colorado. He gave Ed her phone number.

Meanwhile, Patsy said, "I was kind of not happy being single. I talked to my pastor. He said, 'Someday somebody's going to come out of your past and it will be the right fit.'"

Ed said, "Neither one of us was looking, but everything has clicked."

He said his middle daughter told him that Sharon said she hoped he would find someone to replace her when she was gone, and then she started talking about Patsy.

"My kids are thoroughly convinced that Mom is up there looking down at us saying, 'I did good,'" he said.

Following their talk, Ed got a one-way ticket to Colorado and stayed for a month. They got along so well that he went to Iowa with her to visit family and then she came back home with him.

Ed said the first place Patsy wanted to visit was the cemetery.

"I had a talk with Sharon. A tree didn't fall on me, so I guess she approved," Patsy said.

She now keeps flowers on Sharon's grave. A year later, Ed and Patsy are still together.

Based on the longevity of family members, Ed and Patsy figure they have 20 more good years ahead of them. Ed is 78, and Patsy is 76.

Ed also makes wood flowers in his wood shop near Jane. He spent many years doing inside wood trim on new houses and has trimmed at least 5,000 new houses and apartments, he said. He finally quit a year ago, after falling three years ago and dislocating his right shoulder. He has trimmed new houses in 18 states. He started making the wood flowers after Sharon saw some online and said they looked like they had been cut with an ax. Ed says the flowers require precision work.

"When I get done, there's 72 saw cuts and 90 different operations," he said.

He couldn't sell them, so he started giving them away. He paints them different colors. He gave 100 pink ones to First Baptist Church of Pineville for Mothers Day. He also gives away pink ones for breast cancer awareness and green ones for organ donor awareness and a few purple ones for prostate cancer awareness. He is decorating his home with red, white and blue ones for the Fourth of July.

"When I started giving them away, the more I gave away, the more good things came my way," he said. He has given away 2,529 so far.

General News on 06/20/2019