For most people, 87 years is long enough for memories to fade, friendships to drift, and life’s currents to pull us in different directions. But for Pembroke’s Arlene Fleury and Concord’s Floyd Severance, time—no matter how generous—never truly erased the bond formed back when they were teenagers in the halls of Pembroke Academy.
Arlene was 14 when Floyd first knew her. Floyd had been best friends with her older brother, and she was the quiet younger sister who appeared in the background of their high school days. They both grew up on farms, walked the same winding roads to school, and knew all the same families that made up the fabric of small-town New Hampshire in the 1940s.
And then, as happens so often, life took them in different directions.
Floyd went off to serve his country.
Arlene stayed, married young, and built a life full of hard work, devotion, and the deep satisfaction of raising 11 children—and eventually a 12th, the grandson she took in after tragedy. She and her husband built their home, quite literally, from the ground up. They bought cement blocks and lumber one paycheck at a time, recording every expense in a worn ledger she still keeps today.
For decades, the two lived parallel lives in the same small region, yet never crossed paths. In fact, for 40 of those years, Floyd delivered mail right to Arlene’s house—without either of them realizing it.
But sometimes life waits for the right moment to turn old, unfinished threads into something new.
Three years ago, Arlene appeared in the newspaper after receiving Pembroke’s Boston Post Cane—an honor awarded to the town’s oldest resident. Floyd spotted her name, and something tugged at him. He drove from Concord to Pembroke, knocked on her door, and jokingly told her that if he hadn’t moved out of Pembroke, he would have gotten the cane instead.
What he really wanted, he admits, was to take her out to lunch and celebrate her milestone.
They sat down and talked for three hours.
The next day, they went out again.
And they’ve gone out nearly every day since.
“It didn’t matter that we hadn’t seen each other for years,” Arlene says. “We just picked up like no time had passed.”
Now 100, Arlene laughs easily, moves quickly, and cracks jokes with the self-assurance of someone who has lived a century without wasting a minute. She doesn’t drink, never smoked, and has lived a life anchored by hard work, careful bookkeeping, and a devotion to family. Floyd, at 101, keeps his mind sharp with cryptograms and his days full with purpose.
Their companionship is simple and steady. Every afternoon, Floyd drives from Concord to Pembroke, and together they pull from a bowl of handwritten restaurant names—13 in total, all favorites. Arlene chooses one blindly, eliminating what she calls “all that foolish discussion about where we’re going.” The restaurants know them so well that staff joke, “those kids from Pembroke are back!”
To watch them together is to watch two people who genuinely enjoy each other’s company—who laugh, reminisce, debate gently, and fill in each other’s memories like a pair of puzzle pieces.
And what brought them back together wasn’t a grand gesture or a dramatic twist of fate.
It was a knock on a door.
It was someone taking initiative—choosing to reconnect, choosing to care, choosing not to let decades become a barrier.
Floyd says he’s always lived with the belief that staying busy and keeping the mind active is what keeps a person going. Arlene believes in clean living, kindness, and raising children with structure and love. Neither expected that, at their age, they would meet someone who would become a daily presence, a companion, a cherished friend.
But friendships don’t expire.
They just wait—quietly, patiently—for the right time to come alive again.
And for Floyd Severance and Arlene Fleury, that time came 87 years after it first began.
