LEWISTON – Tom Freeman wasn’t discouraged by the ring on Elaine Hachey’s finger. He knew when he saw her in the fall of 1958, as they both showed up to teach Sunday school at St. Patrick’s Church, that she would be his girlfriend one day.

The fact that she was engaged to another man simply meant he had to take it slowly.

Tom waited a couple of weeks before asking Elaine if she wanted to get together to go over lesson plans for their classes.

It seemed logical, he thought, to offer his help. He was 24. She was 18. She probably assumed he knew more about making lesson plans, he reasoned.

Elaine quickly accepted Tom’s invitation, even though she didn’t need help with her lessons.

“Doing lesson plans was easy. We didn’t really have any reason to get together,” Elaine said, sitting in the couple’s sunroom on Pettengill Street more than 45 years later.

Still, for nearly three months, Elaine let Tom come to her house every week to plan the next Sunday lesson. When their work was done, Tom got in his 1956 Ford station wagon and drove home.

Moving slow

He never let on that he thought she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. He never told her that he had already started dreaming about their life together. Even after his friends let him know that Elaine had broken off her engagement, Tom showed up only to do lesson plans.

Then, one Saturday morning, he called and asked if she wanted to go to the movies that night.

When Tom showed up hours later, Elaine’s father invited him to the living room and started talking to him about the neighborhoods of New Auburn, where both men grew up.

Elaine pretended to be interested in the conversation but she didn’t care about New Auburn. She had been waiting months for her first date with Tom and she couldn’t believe they were spending it with her father. Tom said goodbye as if it was another night of making lesson plans.

Two weeks later, Elaine gave Tom a second chance. They went to see “Aunty Mame,” and the night ended with a long kiss on Elaine’s porch.

The following weekend, they went dancing in Portland, then shared a steak dinner.

“We just had a lot of fun together. We loved to dance. We liked to go places,” Tom said. “It was a fun courtship.”

The courtship, however, lasted only a year. On June 16, 1959, Tom and Elaine were sitting in the station wagon in front of Elaine’s house when Tom proposed.

Elaine said yes, Tom slipped a ring on her finger, then the couple went inside to share the news with Elaine’s parents.