PLATTSBURGH — Boy meets girl.
Boy. U.S. Air Force cop from Arkansas stationed at Plattsburgh Air Force Base.
Girl. Orthodox Greek from Montreal.
John Mitchell first met his wife, Bella, when he was in the Air Force. He got out of the military and worked at Wyeth-Ayerst pharmaceuticals. He ran into Bella at mutual friends' home. Now, they have been married 19 years and have two daughters, Athena and Malina.
In Eudora, Ark., black folks lived on one side of the tracks. White folks lived on the other. The town was 5 miles from Louisiana and 12 miles from Mississippi.
John's father had a decent job, and they were the only black family in their neighborhood.
"When you are a kid, you don't realize what you're seeing," said John, who owns Silver Lining Photography and Video in Plattsburgh. "A friend of mine and I were camping at his house. We were just in the back yard in a tent camping out."
A parade of people passed by, dressed in white.
"My parents tried to play it down," John said. "I was a little older; I realized what was really going on."
His high school was 98 percent black. The majority of white students went to a private school, except one family. One of the daughters dated one of John's black classmates. In 1984, interracial dating was a rarity.
"You grow up in a small environment, you only know what is around you," John said. "Until I joined the service, I didn't realize it wasn't that way everywhere."
THE DATING GAME
In Montreal, Bella grew up in a diverse milieu.
"We have a lot of culture at home," she said. "Culture is culture. You learn certain ways."
She definitely feels uncomfortable, at times, when she senses people shift their perspective of her when they discover her husband is black. She is concerned about how her children will be treated by their peers when it comes to the dating game.
John is much more laid back.
"As far as the future, I'm not hung up with them being with a particular race or anything," he said. "I just want them to be happy and have opportunities more than we have had.
"One of the good things, because my wife is Canadian and from Montreal, we get a chance to get out of here and see other places.
"Our eldest daughter is in an advanced art class and going to Paris next summer. We're excited for her.
We just want our children to be happy, prosperous, successful. We teach them to get a good foundation."
AFTER APARTHEID
Elephants brought Marco and Portia Alley Turco of Westport together in their native South Africa.
She is Xhosa and grew up in Soweto. His parents were Italian immigrants. He grew up in Durban, six hours away from Soweto.
The couple met in 1996, two years after freedom, the ending of apartheid.
"We were both working for the media," said Portia, who is the director of Catholic Charities in Plattsburgh. "He was a print journalist. I was a television journalist. He was covering a story at a national game reserve on the translocation of elephants. We were covering the same story. I was chronically late, and he was very early."
She missed a flight, and he offered her a seat on a private plane with him.
"That's how it started," Portia said. "We talked about our different experiences. He was very charming."
They both had the Zulu language in common. He learned from his black nanny. He spoke Zulu before English.
"It created an affinity."
'IT WAS HUSH-HUSH'
During apartheid, interracial marriages were illegal.
"You could get arrested," Portia said. "Soweto was a reservation, only for black people. White people couldn't live there."
The blacks lived in a specific place, as did whites, as did coloreds, mixed-race people.
The Turcos married in 1999.
"It was all so new in South Africa when we got married," Portia said. "People still looked at you. There were people still alive who remembered what it was like in South Africa. I'm one of the last generations that were part of the segregation."
The newlyweds lived in Johannesburg; there were few interracial couples at the time.
"Now, there's a lot more," Portia said. "It was not common. There's a big colored population, mixed-race people. It was hush-hush."
PAIN VALIDATED
She attributes the rapid change in people's attitudes to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which addressed the human-rights abuses under apartheid. The commission was an initiative of the Government of National Unity.
"People have moved on," Portia said. "They had a chance to validate their pain. The government created a situation where it was legal to do that."
In January 2000, the Turcos left their native land for Wisconsin.
"I finally understood white people in South Africa. What it felt like to be in a minority, to be outnumbered. I had never been in that position. To feel part of the minority, like wow, no one who looks like me."
The Turcos lived in Colorado before moving here, where their daughters, Yamuna and Graziella, were born.
"Both are Americans and North Country girls," Portia said. "They speak Italian. We're doing one language at a time."
In the United States, Loving v. Virginia ended remaining bans against interracial marriage in 1967. The same didn't occur in South Africa until 1994.
"I think because we were used to worse, I don't see anything," Portia said. "The little side things ... I'm used to worse.
"The Truth and Reconciliation Commission really healed a lot of those wounds."
Email Robin Caudell at: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com
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