WATERVILLE — Barbara and John H. Willey of Waterville celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary Jan. 20, 2011, while John recovered from pneumonia.

Barbara Ann Winey and John Holt Willey were wed Jan. 20, 1961, in the chapel at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco. After a brief honeymoon drive up the Mendocino coast, they returned to work, Barbara as an RN in Pediatrics at U.C. Medical Center and John for a weekly legal newsletter.

Barbara is the daughter of Eldridge and Virgil Winey of Deloit, Iowa. John is the son of Everett M. and Esther Holt Willey of Clinton.

A 1952 graduate of Good Will High School, John spent three years as a Marine at Camp Pendleton, Calif. In San Francisco, he worked as a writer and an investigator and earned his California investigation license. He opened his own private investigation agency in 1968.

They moved to Iowa in 1975 and to Maine in 1977. They since have lived in Clinton, Boothbay, Mount Vernon, Belgrade and Waterville, where Barbara has been a homemaker and gardener, while John has helped build and restore homes, furniture, boats and pipe organs.

This photo of the couple at their wedding is their unique record; the Golden Gate Bridge superimposed on the scene at the Glide Chapel altar, the happy result of a malfunction in the bride’s Argus C-3 camera.