ARLEY AND MELBA An Adelino couple married for 58 years, ended a beautiful love story on this earth by rising together Tuesday on the wings of angels to everlasting life. Arley Sanchez died on Monday, Aug. 6th following complications after suffering a massive stroke, just a week after Melba died on Monday July 30, following a long illness. He died just a day before Melba was ready to depart alone during her scheduled solo funeral service. In the same Tome Catholic Church where they exchanged vows nearly 60 years ago, Arley and Melba on Tuesday were sanctified during a double funeral Mass attended by family and friends. Born Nov. 3, 1932, on a small country ranch in Adelino as part of the Tome Land Grant, and operated by his late parents -- Seferino and Adela Gonzales Sanchez -- Arley was the last surviving of four sons, preceded in death by brothers, John Berman, Robert and Lorenzo Sanchez. He's survived by two sisters, Helen Casillas and Rosalie Sanchez Marquez. Arley and Melba were loving and supportive parents of six surviving children, Aurelio Arley Sanchez, Richard H. Sanchez, Leroy B. Sanchez, Belma Sanchez Griego, Ken H. Sanchez, and Tina Sanchez; as well as by several grandchildren; nieces and nephews. They were preceded in death by two sons, Clarence Sanchez and Paul Michael Sanchez. A railroad telegraph operator and later a clerk during a more than 40-year career with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, Sanchez, 79, worked with the railroad until he retired in recent years. Melba was a beautician, a day care operator, and a folk artist creating ceramics, turquoise jewelry and porcelain dolls. When the couple met, they were young and barely out of high school, where Arley had been a star basketball player and she a shy studious student, while also working after school as a nurse's aide caring for the babies at St. Joseph Hospital. At first, Melba wasn't very impressed by Arley, not even by his recent star status as a high school basketball player, and he had a pencil thin mustache that her father would make fun of, though the two men would later become very close. Despite knowing about her initial misgivings about him, Arley was love-struck, describing her to friends and family as beautiful, inside and out, and so he kept up his enthusiastic pursuit, which included he and and a friend serenading a surprised, but pleased Melba., with a mariachi love song at her window. Shortly after they married, Uncle Sam came knocking on the door and they were apart for the only extended time of their marriage when he was stationed overseas in Germany for 18 months. In their nearly 60 years of marriage, they had their ups and downs like any married couple, but throughout their long union, they were in love and virtually inseparable, even unto death.
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