The Post-Standard
Syracuse, New York
Friday, October 14, 2011
A match for the ages: Syracuse men to marry today after 52-year relationship
By Marnie Eisenstadt
The Post-Standard
Frederick Marvin keeps a day book for every year. The 91-year-old Syracuse concert pianist has boxes full of the little blacks books where he wrote what he ate, what music he played, where he traveled and who he met.
In his Syracuse house on a recent afternoon, he pulled the book from 1959 out of his basement. He was 39. Marvin flips to April 22. Halfway down the page, amid details about his travels, is this: met Ernst Schuh. It was a meeting that would change his life.
They two men found each other in the Abbey of St. Florian, an Austrian monastery. They both were there to see the grave of composer Anton Bruckner. Marvin was traveling across Europe, playing concerts. Schuh, who survived the battle of Stalingrad in World War II, was an opera critic in Vienna.
They have been together ever since. Now, 52 years later, the music lovers with matching hearing aids are getting married. Today in Syracuse's City Hall, Mayor Stephanie Miner will perform the ceremony.
For Marvin and Schuh, 89, the ceremony is the second this year. On June 22, they had a civil union ceremony in Austria, where same-sex civil unions were legalized last year. Why now?
Because they finally can, now that New York recognizes same-sex marriage. And because they worry about what might happen if one of them gets sick and ends up in the hospital. They've heard stories about same-sex partners being denied access to the person they've been with for years.
"That's a terrible, terrible thing," Marvin said.
He and Schuh spent much of their lives in social circles where people were left to guess about their relationship. They didn't flaunt it, but they didn't deny it either, Marvin said. They use the term "deep friendship" when talking about their relationship. Marvin often refers to Schuh in conversation as "Mr. Schuh."
"At that time, everybody was still hiding in the closet," Schuh said.
Now, they just want the same rights as everyone else, Marvin said.
After he and Schuh met in Austria in 1959, they spent 15 years with Vienna as their home base. Marvin played concerts across Europe and the U.S. and Schuh managed his career. He made the arrangements and he still rattles off the details. They traveled to Spain. They befriended artist Salvador Dali.
They came to Syracuse in 1968, when Marvin took a job teaching piano at Syracuse University. He taught while he continued his concert career. He and Schuh bought a modest house on Houston Avenue off of Meadowbrook and made it theirs.
They knocked out the back wall and put in a little stage where Marvin's twin Steinway pianos sit. They raised the roof to improve the sound and put in a little balcony. It is part living room, part concert venue. Pieces of the men's life together are everywhere.
The room is held up with a beam from an old barn they spotted on East Seneca Turnpike decades ago. Schuh tells the story of having to tell the contractor not to paint the beam. You leave old things how they are because that is where the beauty is, he explains.
On one chair is a quilt made of their ties. They have hundreds between them.
Their memory has become a collective thing, as it often does in old age. They correct each other's accounts and fill in the blanks. Schuh keeps a handwritten calendar for both of them. And he does the cooking that has kept both men in good health. Lots of fruits and vegetables. Not much meat.
They argue that sweet way old married couples do. They don't have a computer or email. Marvin wants one, but Schuh has convinced him it's too complicated. "If he wants one, he can have it in his bedroom," Schuh said. Marvin laughed.
In the stairwell near the front door, Schuh stops to take down a frame and show it to a reporter. Inside are dozens small drawings of birds, cut out from larger pieces of paper. "It is by a very famous artist," Schuh said, smiling widely.
"Oh right," Marvin said, sounding embarrassed.
Since the beginning, Marvin has left Schuh little notes with bird drawings on them. Marvin didn't know it, but Schuh kept them. One year, he cut out the drawings and put them in a frame as a gift.
They watched out the front door as a reporter left, leaning in to each other and laughing about something one of them said.
They looked married already.
Contact Marnie Eisenstadt at meisenstadt@syracuse.com or 470-2246.
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