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Love is a many splendored swing Jamie Lusch / Mail Tribune Ron Thornton surprises his wife, Sharon, Tuesday with the antique glider swing of her childhood, which he spent months secretly restoring. Wednesday Apr 25, 2018 at 6:56 PM Apr 25, 2018 at 6:56 PM Buffy Pollock for the Mail Tribune When 75-year-old Sharon Thornton arrived at her grandson’s Jacksonville home Tuesday to celebrate a belated birthday dinner with family, she admitted to being a tad suspicious when she saw more than two dozen familiar faces gathered in the backyard around an oddly shaped, tarp-covered object. Her husband calmly drove onto the lawn in his shiny black Corvette as she smiled at the group of onlookers. “What is going on?” she asked. Ron Thornton, 74, surprised his wife of 37 years by restoring her childhood glider swing, a gift from her stepfather when she was just 3 years old. “Oh, my mom would’ve got a kick out of this!” Sharon said. “I can’t even believe it!” Sharon remembered how, in her childhood backyard in San Lorenzo, California, she spent countless hours riding the brightly colored swing with her sister, who was developmentally disabled and unable to communicate. Ron said he wanted to do something special for his bride while she endured “one hell of a year” battling ovarian cancer. It was recently declared in remission. Sharon laughed as her husband admitted to “more lies than are supposed to be OK” to get away with his secret project during the past few months. For weeks, he quietly sandblasted and powder-coated and, with the help of a talented cousin as an accomplice, fabricated damaged and missing pieces for the 1940s swing with two opposing seats that now sport a shiny new coat of red, green and yellow paint. Ron said the couple had happened upon the old swing, previously rusted out and in disrepair, after venturing south in 1985 to his wife’s childhood home after the passing of her stepfather, Fred. “Her stepdad never threw anything away,” Ron said. “We spent two weeks cleaning things out and, during that time, we came across this bundle of pipes and stuff. I went and got her mother and said, ‘What am I looking at?’ She said, ‘That was baby Sharon’s swing set when she was 3 years old. Throw it out,’ so I did. Right into the back of my truck.” Fast forward more than three decades. The couple recently moved while downsizing for retirement. “When we got ready to move here recently and we still had it, I said, ‘Throw it out,’ ” Sharon admitted. “I couldn’t see any point in holding on to it. But he’s very thoughtful and very creative and does things like this. … I’m just really touched by this.” Ron said he wanted to do something special for his bride, who he said barely acknowledged her birthday in January. “I have to confess that I have told more lies these last six weeks that I’m sure I’m not going to see the pearly gates. I’m sure that I’ve definitely crossed the line on lying,” he teased his wife. “I had to sneak one piece at a time into my shop and work on it. The other day she came out, and I had four legs out and I was drilling them. She said, ‘I’ve got this and that, I need you to do some things for me.’ I jumped up and said, ‘You bet!’ I was out of that shop so quick she never even saw!” Sharon climbed into the swing across from her husband as soon as it was uncovered. The back of each seat reads, “Thank you, Mom & Fred. 1946,” and the front of each seat is adorned with red vinyl hearts and the couple’s initials, “R.R.T. + S.L.C.” The couple’s daughter Cheryl Green of Gold Hill, one of five children shared between the couple’s blended family, recalled playing on the old swing during her own childhood. Green smiled as she watched her twin granddaughters, Chandler and Parker Empio, do the same. The girls will likely end up with the swing, maybe even passing it down for future generations, several family members noted. “Watching the girls on the swing I had a flashback,” Green said. “I had aunts who were the same age as I was, and I remember swinging on this and we would stand up in the opening and we used to get that thing cranking so high.” Jessica Empio, Green’s daughter, said she loved the thought of her own daughters enjoying a swing that held childhood memories for their great-grandmother. Empio said the gesture of love from husband to wife was equally as touching. “I think it was just such a remarkable act of love,” she said. “It just tugs on your heartstrings. It was really just so very sweet.” Ron was emotional as he talked about restoring his wife’s childhood swing and about their 37 years together. “It’s like wine. Love just gets better and better as the time goes on,” he said. “It’s supposed to be that way.” Reach Medford freelance writer Buffy Pollock at [email protected].