Love at first sight

When Lois Jasper was asked to do a favor for one of her coworkers, she did not expect the unusual twist that it would take.

“One of the women I taught with had a crush on [Jeff Jasper], so she asked me if I could deliver this note to him, and I said yes and delivered it,” Lois said. “When I met him, it was every man for himself at that point.”

Jasper said it was “pretty cool for that time” that Lois had asked him out.

“I am a feminist, and obviously she was too, so it was great for me,” Jasper said. “She was not waiting in line for me to come crawling to her since I was clueless as usual.”

Their first date took place at the closing show of a musical that Lois directed for Pascack Valley. She had asked him to accompany her as her date. When he was at his friends house, the day after the date, Jasper noticed Lois left her bouquet of flowers in the back of his car.

“I was at my best friend Doug Gifford’s house and I was leaving,” Jeff said. “He asked me where I was going, and I said, ‘I am going to return these flowers to the girl I am going to marry.’”

They were married nine months later and have been together since.

Lois started working at PV as a business teacher in 1968 and Jeff as an English teacher in 1971.

Coincidentally, they taught in the classrooms next to each other for months before ever meeting one another.

Lois said that the airlines had been on strike at the time, so a lot of young men who were pilots were substitute teachers and “you did not think anything of it.” Since Jeff started teaching in the middle of the year, Lois said she wouldn’t have been able to tell him apart from the male substitutes.

“We weren’t kids when we met; I was 24 and he was 25,” Lois said.

“There was something adventurous about him and even though he had just come back from Vietnam, he had long hair and this big mustache. He was smart, good looking, and funny — it was a no brainer.”

Power couple

Jeff and Lois coached alongside each other for the first two seasons of PV’s girls basketball program, from 1973 until 1975.

Like Jeff, she too grew up loving and playing basketball.

She played intramurals in school and played “the old way,” in which you were either a guard or a forward and you never passed the center line.

She was assistant coach for two years until, “the game got beyond her.”

“Like most people, I’m watching the ball. Meanwhile, he’s watching 10 players on the court — He has an ability to see the whole picture and break it down,” Lois said. “It’s the only area of his life where he’s able to do that.”

“When the position opened up and he was only supposed to take it as a temporary thing he said he was thinking about keeping it and I said ‘definitely,’” Lois said. “It was good right from the beginning.”

Lois says she “knows more basketball today than when she first started” but she believes Jeff thinks she knows more than she does.

However, she did say that “he has taught her a great deal and she asks him a lot of questions.”

Nowadays, Lois says she is more like the “den mother” of the team.

She goes to every summer game and says she is the only basketball wife she can immediately think of to attend all of these games.

“One time, I couldn’t get to a summer league game because I was babysitting one of our grandkids and people were going up to my husband to ask if I was alright the entire time,” Lois said.

Lois says that her and her husband “have been blessed” with the parents of the players on team. She added that some have even grown to be their best friends.

Through thick and thin

Lois and Jeff both say they make each other laugh.

“My favorite thing about him is that he makes me laugh all the time, and I make him laugh too. We probably laugh more than any couple I’ve ever met,” Lois said.

They described each other to be some of the kindest people they’ve ever met.

“One time when we were first dating, we were driving to a restaurant in Newark and there was a car on the side of the road with the hood up. He started to pull over and I asked him what he was doing because we were in an unfamiliar area and didn’t know these people,” Lois said.

Jasper told her “If you see somebody and they need help, you give them help.”

“We are married 45 years so there a lot of memories and almost all of them are good memories; we’ve had a really good life,” Lois said.

One of their favorite things to do together is travel.

“He was gone for six weeks in Israel teaching sports camps. I thought it would be a good idea if we met in western Europe and spent three weeks with our kids travelling all over Europe,” Jasper said.

They both say that the most difficult time they’ve had together was nine years ago in 2009 when Lois was diagnosed with lymphoma.

“It was more tough on him than on me I think,” Lois said. “We were both working in the same district and people would always ask about it. He became a better listener because he always wanted to make sure he was conveying the right message.”

Lois is now cancer free.

“After I was sick and got well, I planned a trip of a lifetime,” Lois said. “I have been well so we have had several trips of a lifetime.”

Since they worked together for so many years, many of their friends are connected that way.

“We tell stories to this day and the other person really understands because we each know the people we are talking about,” Lois said.