As milestones go, this is a major one. And, of course, it’s a perfect reason to celebrate.

Jim Ed Mulkin and Jane White Mulkin, two longtime residents of Bessemer, are approaching their 70th anniversary. On Monday, May 5, the couple will mark seven decades together, sharing a life that focuses on family, faith, friends and community service.

“The main thing in everything, to me, is love,” Jane says. “Love is the basis of everything. To love, not just each other, but to love other people besides ourselves.”

Jane, 87, will be first to tell you it doesn’t feel like 70 years have passed since she wore a lacy wedding gown and cut into a multi-tiered cake next to her handsome groom. (He’s 95 now, and remains her sweetheart.)

“It really is pretty unbelievable,” Jane says in an interview with AL.com. “I have to admit being married for 70 years is pretty amazing.”

Folks who know the couple — from the neighborhood, from church, from philanthropic groups, from long acquaintance — heartily agree.

To mark the occasion, about 80 well-wishers are set to gather over the weekend for a party at the Mulkins’ favorite restaurant: The Bright Star, a historic eatery in Bessemer with a warm and welcoming vibe.

It’s a place close to the Mulkins’ hearts — they’re fond of the snapper dishes and onion rings — and they’ve spent many Friday nights at a Bright Star table, laughing and joking with two like-minded pals.

“People come to that table and say, ‘Who in the world are y’all? Because you’re laughing and having such a good time,’” says James “Jimbo” Mulkin, one of the couple’s three sons. “It happens all the time. Dad is funny. These friends of theirs are funny. My mother loves to laugh. So they’re just sitting there having a great time, eating those delicious onion rings. People notice how vibrant they are, how lively and alive they are.”

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the Mulkins will be feted at The Bright Star with food and cake, music and speeches, photos and fellowship.

The couple’s children — Jimbo, Joel and Jon Mulkin — want to make sure their parents feel like cherished guests of honor at the event, but Jane says the party will have an extra dimension for her.

“You think about this party being for us, but in my mind, it’s for those people we’re inviting — what a big influence they’ve been on our lives,“ she says. ”The people we’re inviting, they’re family, they’re friends, they’ve made a huge difference in our lives — who we are and what we do. So it’s really, to me, a party for them.”

The Mulkins aren’t the type to toot their own horns, so we’ll have to do it for them.

Jim Ed, born in Bessemer, was a natural athlete who became a football star during the late 1940s and early ’50s at Sewanee: The University of the South in Tennessee. Jim Ed later joined the U.S. Air Force and served during the Korean War. When he returned to his home state, he bought a junkyard and founded a successful chain of auto parts stores.

A respected businessman, Jim Ed served on several boards of directors, including the Bessemer Industrial Development Board. He was on the board for First Financial Bank, the Bessemer Hall of History, Legacy YMCA and more.

In 2018, he was honored with the Charles A. Long Outstanding Civic Award from the Bessemer Area Chamber of Commerce. The James E. Mulkin Downtown Business Center in Bessemer is named after him, as well. Jim Ed sold Mulkin Auto Parts to a larger company after about 40 years in business and is now retired.

Jane White grew up in Woodward, a town near Bessemer that was linked to Woodward Iron Co. After her high school graduation, she married Jim Ed, who’d apparently spotted her a few years earlier and resolved that Jane would be his future wife. Jane was 17 and Jim Ed was 25 when they tied the knot at First Methodist Church of Bessemer.

“Everybody was horrified when I got married that young,” Jane recalls. “It was just unheard of, in any of my friends. But we did marry in May, after we’d been dating about a year-and-a-half. He’s been to Okinawa. He was in the Korean War, and he’d been a big football player. And gosh, I thought he was so debonair. But I just fell for him right away, I really did.”

The Mulkins settled in Bessemer and quickly became a vital part of the community. While their kids were growing up, Jane stayed home to raise them with care and dedication. She also became involved with several volunteer groups, including the Bessemer Hall of History and Bessemer Area Historical Society.

“I always volunteered a lot,“ Jane says. ”I was a stay-at-home mom, but I volunteered, tutoring children to read and telling stories to children. And I did fashion shows. I enjoy doing things like that in the community.”

In her 40s, Jane continued her education after the Mulkins’ youngest son left the nest, earning a bachelor’s degree in English and fine arts at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

“I had lived in a small town and been an only child, and it just opened my eyes to the world when I went there,” Jane says. “I was just so amazed at all the people from all the different places and all the different opportunities — but also just the hardships so many of them had. They had families and were working jobs and then going to college, too. I was just blown away by those strong people.”

Her college experiences inspired the Mulkins to establish the Jane White Mulkin Endowed Scholarship at UAB, to support nontraditional students in the arts and humanities who attend school while working and caring for their families.

Jane’s accomplishments at UAB made her children proud, but they’d already seen their mother’s brainpower at work on the home front.

“She is whip-smart and interested,” Jimbo Mulkin tells AL.com. “Mom’s just a very curious and interested person, about people and all sorts of things.”

Jane also donated an extensive collection of vintage clothing to UAB’s theater department in 2014. Both of the Mulkins are avid collectors; a 2017 feature story for a UAB magazine mentions the couple’s fondness for “folk and outsider art, primitive furniture, Alabama pottery, textiles, old tools and even fire-fighting equipment.”

Throughout their marriage, the Mulkins have been involved in programs and activities at their church — first at United Methodist Church and then at Pleasant Hill Methodist Church in Bessemer.

“We do a lot through our volunteer work at church,” Jane says. “It’s very important to us. Jim Ed is an usher at church. I’ve taught Sunday school for probably 60 years. He’s been an usher for almost that long, too. … We have a food bank in our church and we work with a Neighborhood Bridges program, packing food bags for children for weekends when they don’t have enough to eat. We work with Meals on Wheels to deliver meals to people in their home. We stay busy doing something all the time.”

The Mulkins have a daily reminder of the philosophy they choose to live by, via a Methodist motto posted on their refrigerator: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”

The Mulkins have always led by example, their son says, and his parents remain doers and achievers.

“My mother is more active than just about anybody I know,” Jimbo says. “She takes yoga. She’s got a trainer. She takes step class. She’s out almost every day working in her yard or doing all kind of things at church. Delivering Meals on Wheels, taking food and things to various people. Dad helps her with a lot of those things. He is also still pretty active. We are fortunate to have a farm down near Tuscaloosa, and he loves to fish. He goes down there, and he loves to take care of the land down there. They are super-duper active, which is incredible.”

Gardening is one of Jane’s passions — she’s a veteran of the master gardeners course offered in Tuscaloosa by the Alabama Cooperative Extension System — and she’s especially fond of orchids and native plants that attract butterflies. The Mulkins have lived in their current home for nearly 60 years, but Jane says their garden continues to be a pleasurable work in progress.

The Mulkins have been travelers in the past— Jane says they enjoyed going to Italy, France, England and South America — but these days, the couple sticks closer to home. Short trips are easier for them, Jane says, and the Mulkins stay involved with their three children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

The Mulkins have spent nearly all of their married lives in Bessemer and have no plans to leave it.

“I think my parents know everybody in the city, basically,” Jimbo says. “They raised their family there. Their extended families were all there. I think they had a support group or system there and just liked it.”

Ask Jane if she’d have any advice for her younger self — the excited teen who settled down with her ambitious husband to raise a family in Alabama — and here’s what she says:

“I’d tell her just to experience life, just to live every moment. Sometimes in the smallest of things you reap the greatest rewards or the greatest knowledge. Just seeing a butterfly in flight thrills me to death. That sounds kind of corny, I guess, but don’t let things pass you by without appreciating them or paying attention. We just need to value every moment and everything that happens.”