Ballroom dance keeps couple smiling

From Danceland to dancing hand-in-hand, Millie and Bob Mitchell have stepped from courtship through 62 years of marriage to enjoying an active retirement.

About 25 years ago the Cedar Rapids couple began taking ballroom dance lessons. They added it to their recreational repertoire - bridge, golf, tennis, bowling.

“If music motivates you, it's fun,” says Bob, 85.

“It was an activity we could do together,” adds Millie, 86.

These days, the Mitchells dance about three times a week in Walford, Guttenberg, Dubuque or Davenport. They could be a poster couple for National Ballroom Dance Week, which began last weekend and runs through Sunday.

With that and TV's “Dancing with the Stars” kicking off its new season this week, you'd think ballroom dancing was alive and well.

But Millie and Bob worry about its future.

“I tell you,” Bob says, “ballroom dancing is dying. As us geezers pass on, there's nobody left to pick up the baton.”

For Bob, who was raised by his aunt, Billie Schlack, dancing began as a child.

“She would have me stand on her feet and twirl me around the kitchen to the dining room,” he says.

Millie often went with her parents to dances at St. Patrick's Church.

So when they met at Danceland shortly after World War II, both had dancing experience, although at different levels.

“She happened to be a very good dancer at the time and I was the wannabe,” Bob says.

Married on March 8, 1947, the couple set dancing aside. They went about raising two children, Randy, 59, of Las Vegas, and Debbie Wolk, 54, of Richfield, Minn. Bob's varied career, which included selling real estate, led them to buy the Capri Motor Lodge in Coralville. They ran it from 1964 until selling it to retire in 1986.

Only then did they get serious about dancing, taking lessons from Anita Douglas of Marion for 20 years. They even kept about two dozen notecards, each with a dance and the various steps associated with it.

The fox trot, the waltz, tango, rumba, cha-cha ...

Up to three times a week, the Mitchells will dance two or three hours at a time, rarely sitting out a dance.

“We can't go more often than that,” Bob chuckles “At our ages we need a day off.”

“There's one thing whenever you go to a dance,” Millie says. “It's a happy place. People go there to make friends. They all have smiles on their faces.”