Couple Married for 75 Years Die Side by Side in California Wildfires .

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Members of the Los Padres Hot Shot crew walk atop a hill during the Wilson Fire near Mount Wilson in the Angeles National Forest in Los Angeles.
Members of the Los Padres Hot Shot crew walk atop a hill during the Wilson Fire near Mount Wilson in the Angeles National Forest in Los Angeles. (REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni)

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Charles and Sara Rippey met in grade school in Wisconsin and were together ever since. They attended the University of Wisconsin and married in 1942, before Charles served in the U.S. Army during World War II.

The couple celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary last year. Charles was 100 years old; Sara was 98 and had suffered a stroke. They lived together in their home in Napa, California.

Last week, they died together.

After wildfires ravaged their community, one of their sons discovered their bodies. Charles fought through the intense heat and smoke and almost made it to his wife’s side. His son found their remains near each other.

“My father certainly wouldn’t have left her,” he told reporters. Only metal and porcelain survive in the charred remains of their home—coffee cups on a low sill, a porcelain tea set, and two metal chairs side-by-side.

The Rippeys are making headlines because their lifelong commitment to each other strikes a chord in our souls. We sense somehow that what they had is what we want. We know that there is more to life than what a fire can consume.

Richard Simmons III is founder and executive director of The Center for Executive Leadership. In The True Measure of a Man, he notes that we have shifted from a production economy to a consumer economy. As a result, we measure ourselves not by what we do but by what we own. Our work is a means to our wealth.

And in a culture driven by social media and instant celebrity, we measure ourselves by how others measure us. Simmons quotes professor Christopher Lasch, who observed that people “would rather be envied for their material success than respected for their character.”

Marcus Aurelius noted that “the true worth of a man is to be measured by the objects he pursues.” What “objects” should we pursue?

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