65th anniversary: Hardcastle

Joe and Sherrill Harlin Hardcastle will celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary Aug. 24 by enjoying dinner at one of their favorite restaurants, Sybill's in St. James. 

Sherrill is the daughter of the late H. T. and Billye Harlin. Joe is the son of the late Carl and Hazel Hardcastle. They were high school sweethearts who graduated from Gainesville High School together in 1957.  

They were married Aug. 24, 1958, in the Harlins' home in Gainesville, with the Rev. Paul Rathbun officiating. Last-minute plans for the ceremony were complicated by the death of Billye Harlin's mother in Texas four days before the wedding. Billye and H. T. drove to Texas for the funeral and arrived home at 4 a.m. the morning of the wedding. Family friends stepped in to make sure everything went smoothly.

While Joe served two years in the Army, the couple lived in Augusta, Georgia, and Fayetteville, North Carolina. After his honorable discharge, they lived in Kansas City before moving to Springfield and then settling in Lebanon, where they lived for 47 years. Joe managed Herrman Lumber for more than 20 years there and then managed Meeks Lumber for three years before starting his own business, JH Excavating. Sherrill worked in banking for 10 years, continuing a career she launched in childhood at the Bank of Gainesville (now Century Bank of the Ozarks), which was owned by the Harlin family.  Later she owned Monograms Unlimited in Lebanon for 30 years until closing the business and retiring in 2016. 

Today they live on their Gasconade River farm near Richland. They have two children, Lisa Ehlers and husband Ed of Clifton, Virginia, and Brad Hardcastle of Gainesville. They also have three step-grandchildren, Noah Ehlers and fiancee Jordan Thompson of Charlottesville, Virginia; Army 2nd Lt. Hannah Ehlers of Fort Sill, Oklahoma; and Eli Ehlers, a freshman at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut.