A 50th wedding anniversary is a milestone. It’s not easy to achieve, but it’s not unusual.

Stan Martin, associate minister at Cherry Avenue Christian Church, said it’s even kind of a trend in his church’s congregation, where some couples have been married 60 or 70 years. But until he learned of Joe and Betty Ennis Bingler’s 50th anniversary on Feb. 2, Martin had never heard of six siblings in the same family reaching that mark. Joe Bingler is the last of his brothers and sisters to get there.

Five of the six couples attended church Sunday, where they were recognized for their collective achievement: 333 years of marriage.

Besides Joe and Betty Bingler, those gathered at the church were William R. “Peanut” and Merle Addington Bingler, married 59 years; James “Monk” and Fredell Thacker Bingler, married 59 years; Alice and Walter Eades, married 58 years; and David and Betty Wells Bingler, married 50 years. A sister Mildred DeLozier and her husband of 57 years, Ralph, live in Knoxville, Tenn., and couldn’t make the trip. Another sister, Waverly, the oldest, and a brother, Hugh, the youngest, died before reaching their 50th anniversaries.

Although Sunday wasn’t a big affair - a slide presentation of family photos before the regular church service - Martin did make the occasion part of his message for the day.

“Marriage is too easy a thing to get in and out of these days. Anything I can do to promote [strong marriages], I’m going to do,” he said a few days before the service.

The minister might want to start by considering the home of the late Willie and Florence Bingler of 1113 Cherry Ave., where it all began.

“I think they certainly gave us the leadership. That, along with going to church and believing in God,” said Joe Bingler, who was a football coach at Lane High School during its 53-game winning streak in the ’60s and later became the first athletic director at Western Albemarle High School. “I never once thought about divorce. I mean, there’d be ups and downs, peaks and valleys in our marriage, but divorce wasn’t an option.”

“They taught us that when we had trials that we work through them and that they would make us stronger, and they do,” Alice Eades said, but there’s more to it than that.

“We are an affectionate family. That’s one thing. We’re not afraid to show our love. You know a lot of people have love, but ... ,” she said, her words trailing off.

“It’s just a very tight bunch,” Fredell Bingler said of the family she married into 59 years ago, describing Christmas Eve dinners at the Cherry Avenue home that no one missed unless fighting a war or too ill to get out of bed.

Fredell Bingler shares a mischievous and irrepressible sense of humor with her husband, Monk, who’s rarely serious. He claims they’re all working on PhDs - “piled high and deep,” a joke probably heard more than once by people who know him as a longtime usher (since 1939) at University of Virginia athletic events and former high school football official.

About Sunday’s event, Fredell joked that the church must have thought it unusual to be married so long without killing each other. “To have survived spousal bliss or abuse, depending on how you want to say it,” she said.

Abuse - in the form of good-natured ribbing - was part of life in a home Alice Eades characterizes as one of Charlottesville’s first community centers. “Grandma Bingler,” as Florence Bingler came to be known, ran a house where neighborhood kids could always find peanut butter sandwiches after school, where prayer meetings were held on Wednesday evenings and where the living room carpet was taken up on Saturday nights so family, friends and neighbors could play music and dance.

“Not only that, but on weekends our papa would take all of us, all of the neighborhood kids and the parents weren’t afraid for them to go with us, to a river, and we’d all go swimming,” Eades said, recalling a time when people didn’t fret about getting sued for doing something nice.

Willie Bingler owned W.R. Plumbing and Heating. He ferried the kids to the Moormans River near Free Union in the same work truck he took them to First Christian Church in. David Bingler remembers his father making more than one trip back and forth to the church, the pickup’s bed packed with neighborhood kids.

But church attendance wasn’t so regular in the family until Monk - nine years David’s senior and drafted even before he could graduate from Lane High School - was captured by the Germans in World War II. He escaped and was shot by Americans as he re-entered Allied lines. The family knew none of this then, only that he was missing in action.

“I remember Mama falling on her knees and saying ‘Lord, if you’ll just let me know that my son is alright, then I’ll be faithful to you,’ ” David Bingler said.

Days later a letter from Monk arrived with the news that he was recuperating in England. Monk made it home to finish his high school degree. After that, “she never sent us to church. No, she took us,” David Bingler said.

That was before Cherry Avenue Christian Church was built. Joe, David and Hugh Bingler helped clear the land for it.

For all her kindness Florence Bingler, who attended Miller School and spent summers living with her Aunt Beulah Via at Michie Tavern before it was sold in 1927 and moved to the bottom of Carter’s Mountain, was a disciplinarian who didn’t spare the rod, her children said.

It was their father who always made them laugh, but when he died in 1970 they discovered something about their mother.

“When Papa died Mama’s wit came out. She had a lot of wit and we never knew it, because she let him take the front seat. And I think that’s what she instilled in us, to let our husbands take the front seat,” Alice Eades said with a good laugh.

True or not, the women do step out when the men get together every other Thursday for a card game. Peanut, Joe, Monk, David and Alice’s husband, Walter, alternate hosting the game. It’s a practice they started when Florence Bingler died in 1994 to make sure they made time for one another.

Nothing stands in the way of it, even in-laws, Fredell Bingler said, explaining the sole purpose is to share each other’s company.

“And play cards,” she said, with a chuckle, musing on how that will go over in church.

Close throughout their lives - a closeness they’ve passed on to their own children, Joe Bingler said - a note Florence Bingler left to her children when she died drew them even tighter.  In it she affirms her love for them and charges them to keep their faith in God.  “Goodbye, for now,” she wrote in closing.

Faith in each other and God helped sustain the Binglers and their spouses through life’s trials. There were separations as all of the men, including in-laws, were in the military, lean financial times and the loss of family members. Peanut and Monk sent home money from the service after their father lost his leg in a work-related accident.

They even divided their parents’ estate without disagreement or rancor, Alice Eades said with pride.

There’s another, less reverent side, too. They like to kid one another, Joe Bingler pointed out, but maybe older brother Monk said it best.

“We all enjoy living. If you can’t enjoy living, why hang around?”

Many of the 21 children, 50 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren were in church on Sunday to celebrate 333 years of living in happy marriages. It was a sight for Joe Bingler.

“If felt so good standing up in church and looking at our offspring,” he said.