Couple married almost 60 years ‘left together’

Henry Thomas Diehl died Feb. 11 and Mary Eleanor Wellman Diehl died 15 days later. Couple wed nearly 60 years 'left together'

Tom and Mary Diehl were born four years apart in the same town but didn't meet until college. They would have celebrated 60 years of marriage and devotion this summer, if they had not "left together," as daughter Mary Kathleen Reichert describes it.

Henry Thomas Diehl died Feb. 11 at age 84, and Mary Eleanor Wellman Diehl died 15 days later. She was 80.

A memorial celebration will be held for the Diehls today, Monday, at 1 p.m. at Westminster Canterbury Richmond, 1600 Westbrook Ave. It will be "a celebration of a really full, rich life," their daughter said.

Mrs. Diehl loved working with flowers. She began a home-based dried flower business early in their life together, and later became a nationally recognized floral designer. She provided bouquets presented to medalists in the sailing competition of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, her daughter said.

"Flowers were her passion and her ministry," Reichert said.

After retirement, Mr. Diehl worked with Stephen Ministries and was a lay minister and counselor, as well as a Meals on Wheels volunteer and a reading tutor for elementary school children. His career with General Electric was as a salesman and consultant with architects.

"He would help them figure out how many miles of wire they'd need for a skyscraper," his daughter said, and he wired the parking lots of Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, which often ranks as the world's busiest.

He was an Air Force veteran, who interrupted his studies in electrical engineering at Virginia Tech to become a pilot. He flew a Boeing RC-135 reconnaissance plane.

He was awarded his degree the day before he and Mary, a student at Mary Baldwin College, were married.

Both natives of Huntington, W.Va., they had met for the first time at a Tech football game.

Mr. Diehl's work with GE took the couple to Minneapolis for 26 years. They retired in Hilton Head Island, S.C.

"They were not well-off, so my mother made a job for herself," doing floral design and caring for the flowers and plants at the homes of celebrities, including basketball star Michael Jordan and singer John Mellencamp, her daughter said. "She decorated homes for Christmas through the 1970s. She was one of the best-known floral designers on the island."

The Diehls enjoyed traveling the world. Mr. Diehl's boyhood dream was to walk on the Great Wall of China, and he did.

They moved to Richmond in 2004 to be close to their daughters, Reichert of Glen Allen and Anne Diehl Lacey of Richmond.

As Mr. Diehl's health declined, Mrs. Diehl "pushed him all over that huge building. She took him to every theater and every music event. Every night she would sit in his room and knit for the Salvation Army," Reichert said.

In addition to their daughters, the Diehls are survived by four grandchildren. Mr. Diehl is also survived by sisters Ruth Rhodes of Lynchburg and Pollye Jones of Columbus, Ohio.