Fred and Betty Temple; married for 65 years, they died one week apart

Frail and 90 years old, Fred Temple died in his bedroom Tuesday of a broken heart. His wife, Betty, who was 89, had died a week earlier in the same room of the Medfield house they had shared for nearly a half century.

''I went in the next day and said, 'How do you feel?' " said their daughter Cynthia McCord of Plantation, Fla. ''He said, 'I have nothing left.' "

''It's a really romantic story," McCord's twin, Susan Riedel of Lafayette, Calif., said of the lifelong love shared by her parents, whose health had steadily declined in the past few years. ''He just could not or would not live without her."

Fredric C. Temple and Elizabeth Eckman were shy teenagers when they first exchanged greetings more than 75 years ago as he walked past her house on the way to school in Boston, where they both were born. They married in 1940, on her 24th birthday.

''I don't think either one of them had a real date with anyone else," said their other daughter, Nancy Horan of Medfield.

''We were trying to calculate," Riedel said. ''I bet they weren't apart a month total in 65 years. He didn't want to be anywhere else. And he certainly didn't want to be alone without her."

Mr. Temple graduated from Roxbury Latin and Harvard University. Mrs. Temple graduated from Girls Latin and Simmons College.

''In her entire life she had one day of employment. She was a substitute teacher for one day," Horan said. ''They happened to call her on a day when something disastrous was happening at home. She went, but her mind wasn't on it. She took it as a sign, I think."

At home she was a writer, using experiences with her children as fodder for articles and essays about being a parent and a homemaker. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, she wrote: ''Will the good guys and the good things ever come out on top? Struggling to believe they will, I watch the birds, paint tables, and sew a better seam."

Mrs. Temple also became an amateur physician of sorts and boiled ferns found on their property in a malodorous potion that rid her children of the poison ivy rashes they picked up in the nearby woods.

''She was a wonderful person for anyone who was sick -- she just knew what to do," McCord said. ''Whenever anyone was sick, we'd call home and say, 'I want to speak with the doctor.' "

In a tribute posted on a funeral home website, her son John of Barnstable noted that she ''was famously well-read," and that ''she was a walking dictionary of arcane proverbs and literary quotations, sprinkled freely throughout the most practical, down-to-earth conversations (though not so down-to-earth as to include any swearing beyond 'darn')."

Mr. Temple worked for 42 years at John Hancock Life Insurance Co. in Boston, where he was an advanced sales consultant. ''Tell them I solve problems," he would instruct his children when they had to fill out a form that listed their father's occupation. They said he turned down promotions that would have required him to spend time away from home.

''He earned enough to provide comfortably, but not extravagantly, which was fine by him and fine by my mother, who was a master of Yankee frugality," said the couple's other son, David of Medfield.

After their fifth child was born, Mr. Temple designed a house that was built next to a wooded area of Medfield.

''He was very proud of that house, and they didn't want to leave it," Horan said. ''So they didn't."

The hallway was large enough to accommodate his baby grand piano. At one point, he also had an organ, another piano, and an electric piano, McCord said. He played by ear until around 80, when he learned to read music.

''He had a great ear," she said.

''He had one professional gig in his life," John said. The regular piano player at a restaurant in Chilmark called in sick during one of the couple's many visits to Martha's Vineyard. Mr. Temple filled in.

Together they shared a none-too-discreet love affair with words and language. The couple started a writers' group in Medfield about 25 years ago. Mrs. Temple wrote freelance articles and Mr. Temple wrote a family history.

A few years ago, when Mrs. Temple had pneumonia, they had to sleep in separate rooms for a while, Riedel said, but the distance proved too great. The children moved the beds so the headboards were against each other, separated by a wall upon which their parents could tap as a reminder that they were only inches apart.

With the doors open to the hallway, he would place a compact disc of his piano playing in the stereo and they would fall asleep to the music.

The children will greet their parents' friends tomorrow, beginning at 2 p.m., at Roberts-Mitchell Funeral Home in Medfield.

''This Saturday is for him, but I don't feel like I'm going to my father's funeral," Horan said. ''I'm going to my parents' funeral."

In addition to their five children, Mr. and Mrs. Temple leave 14 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Burial will be private.