Marguerite Coleman at her 95th birthday party.
Three times the charm. At least that’s how Ruston, Louisiana native Marguerite Coleman feels about marriage. Married three times with her last marriage lasting 45 years, she has plenty of advice on how to make a relationship last and her own love trials. At 98 years old, she enjoys sharing them with her great great niece, Shamontiel, the Chicago Relationships Examiner.
Mrs. Coleman’s first marriage was to a man named Clyde Anderson, who she was married to for three years before they separated. Anderson, who is now 100 years old, and Mrs. Coleman still talk from time to time on the phone.
After Anderson, she married Joseph Napoleon for three years, but he died of tuberculosis.
But even after two marriages, that didn’t stop Mrs. Coleman from pursuing love again. This Ruston, Louisiana native, who was born on Feb. 8, 1912, moved to Chicago in 1931 and met Thomas Coleman. After changing her last name two times from Ettress to Anderson to Napoleon, she’d decided to take her time before getting married again, and she initially wasn’t interested in Mr. Coleman. Mrs. Coleman met him at a nightclub.
“He said, ‘I’ve been watching you ever since you go to work everyday’,” Mrs. Coleman said. “He could see me when I got off the train. He trailed me and got there. He told my niece Joyce, ‘I like your mother.’ She said, ‘That’s not my mother. That’s my auntie.’ He said, ‘Well, y’all look so much alike I thought maybe she had had you.’”
Mr. Coleman was an honorably discharged veteran who served in World War II and was in his 30s when he met Mrs. Coleman.
“His birthday was December the 25th,"Mrs. Coleman said. “We got married near his birthday.”
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Mr. Coleman (pictured left) won Mrs. Coleman over on Dec. 18, 1943, the day they got married. That marriage lasted 45 years until he passed away in 1988. She jokes about him trailing her for a number of years before she’d give him the time of day.“He was living with a woman,” Mrs. Coleman said. “She was trailing us everywhere we’d go, and we didn’t know she was doing it. We went to this party, and she said, ‘Do you know this is my man?’ He jumped up and said, ‘What you talking about? I’m not your man. I’ve been living with you.’”
That argument escalated quickly. Mrs. Coleman’s cousin, Corrinne Mayfield, shut down the drama that day.
“My cousin said, ‘Don’t disturb our table or you’ll be picking your ass up off the floor,’” Mrs. Coleman said. “And girl, when she said that, that girl flew. She told Tom, ‘You better handle your business better than this.’”
Mr. Coleman clarified that he was trying to get away from his roommate, but Mrs. Coleman wasn’t going for it.
“You ain’t trying to quit her if she’s still looking for you,” Mrs. Coleman said. She wouldn't have anything to do with him until the two separated.
Unfortunately, Mr. Coleman’s roommate wasn’t willing to let him go that easily. She stabbed him in the hand, and Mrs. Coleman ended up taking him to the hospital. Mrs. Coleman told the roommate that if she ever came to attack him again or her, she’d call the police or her own brother, Dorsey Ettress.
“After she stabbed him, she said, ‘I could’ve done killed you a long time ago, but I can’t have no kids and you can. And he wants a boy and a girl, and you’re going to give them to him,” Mrs. Coleman said, who didn't have children at the time. “I told her, ‘Yeah, I’m not going to shack with him. I’m going to marry him.’”
Another lady wanted the roommate to harm Mrs. Coleman, but the roommate was determined to get to Mr. Coleman instead. Medical claims money covered the cut between his two fingers after trying to catch his ex-roommate in mid-stab. Ironically instead of the roommate scaring Mrs. Coleman away, it made the Colemans closer.
“The woman finally left him alone after that [stabbing] and moved to Detroit. She met another man, but she later died of a heart attack,” Mrs. Coleman said, “But Tom was so nice to me. He would clean my skillets and cook for Joyce. He taught so many people how to cook. He taught Joyce’s daughter [Faye] how to make biscuits and do mechnical work. He taught [the Colemans’ son] Butch how to do all the work that he know how to do.”
But it wasn’t his culinary skills that made the marriage last.
“If Tom could come out of the dead, I’d go get him from the graveyard,” Mrs. Coleman said, who later had three children with Mr. Coleman. “That’s how much I loved him. That man treated me so nice. I thought I was in another world. I’d already had two husbands and didn’t plan to get married again. But Tom was wanting me so bad, he said, ‘I will make everything that you want perfect.’ He said, ‘Cause I want you, and I feel like, ‘If I marry you, I got a wife.’ And I hadn’t heard that good name in a long time. That’s what made me marry him.”
Plenty of her opinions about how to make a marriage work revolve around her own parents, William and Susie Pearl Ettress.
“Papa told me if a [man] whoop you, he’ll whoop you again,” Mrs. Coleman said. “He said a piece of wood that you throw on the fire will burn until it burns out. He said don’t marry nobody can’t take care of you in every way, not just financially.”
“He said, ‘I treated you like my babies. If a man can’t do that, to hell with him,’” Mrs. Coleman said with a laugh.
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