Their life together led them from marrying immediately before he began his service in World War II, to helping found the Keystone resort, plus a year living abroad to teach their children life lessons, and finally becoming EMTs in their 60s when their local community needed a critical gap in emergency service filled.

Now, Koert and Connie Voorhees are marking another life adventure together: celebrating both of their 100th birthdays. Koert turned 100 years old on Aug. 5. Connie turned 100 in April.

On Sunday, loved ones gathered in Denver to celebrate the couple’s milestone birthdays and love story. The birthday party was marked by a special appearance from the founder of an organization that has provided tens of thousands of letters to veterans throughout the country thanking them for their service.

“I think the Navy experience is bigger than 100 years,” Koert said.

Nothing but Love Notes

Natalie Reilly founded Nothing but Love Notes after her mother received a terminal cancer diagnosis in 2015.

Reilly’s mother was the strongest person she knew. When the diagnosis left her mother “a shell” of her former self, unable to leave her room or eat, Reilly came up with the idea of writing thank you notes for first responders to get her mother out of the house. She knew if the roles were reversed, her mother would do the same for her.

The two decided to pen 50 love notes, mostly for veterans and first responders, on Valentine’s Day in 2016.

“It was just a way to save ourselves,” Reilly said.

They then spent three hours disseminating the letters, leaving some on windshields, and handing out others at grocery stores. The experience was so uplifting, Reilly and her mother continued writing and giving out the “love notes” at every opportunity for the final two years of her mother’s life.

Reilly promised her mother upon her passing that she would keep the tradition going. She has since delivered roughly 40,000 love notes to veterans and first responders across the country, carrying handwritten thank you cards in her purse wherever she goes.

“I’ve had grown men cry on my shoulder from every war,” she said. “They look strong on the outside, but they are carrying a lot on their shoulders.”

Early in the launch of her mission, Reilly had met a woman who stopped her in a coffee shop to ask what she and her mother were doing. That woman, Teri Welsch, is Koert’s niece, who asked Reilly to help her uncle celebrate he and Connie’s birthdays, she said.

Reilly traveled from her home in California to Denver on Aug. 6 to personally deliver a special batch of letters collected over two months from people throughout the U.S. for Koert and Connie.

Inside the pile was a handwritten letter from Reilly, too.

Inside her letter, Reilly told Koert she was thankful for him and that “I was grateful as an American to have the freedoms and liberties that I have, and that I haven’t forgotten his service from all those years ago.”

A life well lived

One of the Voorhees’ three children also traveled far to take part in the celebration.

Beth Walter has lived in Australia since the 1980s but flew to Denver to celebrate her father’s 100th birthday. She and her siblings grew up feeling as though they had the perfect parents, she said.

“It’s just amazing that we still have both of them,” she said.

Koert served in World War II as a U.S Naval officer in the South Pacific as well as during the Korean War.

Her father was fortunate to have been spared from combat during his 18 years in the U.S. Navy, Walter said.

The couple has been married for nearly 80 years. They met on their first day of college, and married days after Koert was commissioned as an officer at the age of 20.

Her parents expected Koert to immediately join the fighting in WWII following their marriage, but instead a severe case of poison oak delayed his departure. Then a mechanical failure on his first ship out returned him to Hawaii.

Voorhees was on the cusp of shipping out again when the bombs dropped, Walter said. Instead of facing combat, Voorhees celebrated the end of the war in Pearl Harbor.

During the Korean War, Voorhees was deployed to the Mediterranean, where he took in the French Riviera and Rome and Athens.

“Somebody had to do it,” he said, recalling learning to read the Greek alphabet while in Greece during that time. During that war, her father was older than most troops sent into combat, Walter said.

Strengthening the United Nations remains a passion for Koert and Connie.

“We don’t want war anymore as the way of settling international problems,” he said.

Koert and Connie would go on to become founding investors in the Keystone resort. Mid-life, they took their three children and three more children under their care to Switzerland for a year and put them into grade school.

“Ever since we met in college, we were thinking, wouldn’t it be nice if we were able to someday take our children to a foreign country for a year,” he said. “It made them brave.”

At about the age of 60, he and Connie became EMTs because in the area where they were living in Texas, it could take 40 minutes for an ambulance to reach someone. It was a wonderful experience, he said.

The secret to a long life and marriage is simple, he said. Be polite to your wife.

“When she hands you the butter you say, ‘Thank you.’ And she says, “You’re welcome,” he said. “Most people forget the “You’re welcome” part.”