Jean and Kenneth Arnold of 402 West Grand Street in Gallatin were selected for the last summer Yard of the Month by the Gallatin Garden Club.
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The Arnolds started their flower garden fairly recently. After deciding “Mom needs some flowers,” their daughter, Peggy Robidoux of Gallatin, bought $82 worth of Vinca and spring-time tulips and helped her folks plant them around the house. The bushes in the north yard are purple Rose of Sharon.
Jean, 74, and Kenneth, 79, have had some close calls with their health. Both credit the other for the strength to recover and will to survive.
“This guy’s took care of me all this time,” said Jean. “I don’t know what I would have done without him.”
Jean had quadruple by-pass surgery in 1991 while they were snow birding in Texas. The doctors told them that if they didn’t do something Jean would be dead in eight hours.
Jean didn’t hear anything while she was in the hospital undergoing surgery, except Kenneth asking the doctor what was going to happen. The doctor told him she was going to die. “To hell she is!” Kenneth said.
“When I heard that I knew Kenneth was there and he’d take care of everything,” said Jean.
Then in 2000 Jean had a massive heart attack at home in Gallatin. Two weeks later she had a stroke and went temporarily blind. When she woke up, Kenneth asked her if she had seen light at the end of the tunnel. Jean told him she couldn’t even see the tunnel.
Jean says while she was unconscious, she did have an out-of-body experience of some type. She said she saw someone in a bright light and she was reaching up for him to go to him.
“Then the doctor zapped me and brought me back,” Jean said.
The Arnolds take a great deal of comfort and strength from their faith.
“We’re talking to the Lord a lot,” said Jean.
“The doctors and the guy upstairs,” said Kenneth.
Kenneth and Jean had a commercial sewing machine repair business together, and Kenneth worked at a grain feed elevator for 40 some years in Illinois. Besides Peggy, the Arnolds have two other children, Sue Everett of Gibson City, Ill., and Eugene of Urbana, Ill.
They both enjoy their flower garden and yard all year round.
“Jean checks on the flowers before she goes to bed, and then when she gets up she talks to them again,” said Kenneth.