There was a certain spark in the eyes of Ellin Harden and Franklin H. Williams that I couldn’t forget. I know love can be as fickle as a flame — bright and constant one minute, cold and gone the next.

But the way they gazed at each other left me writing countless endings to a love story I knew nothing about.

Instead of creating a “drive off into the sunset” narrative, I decided to piece together what happened to the mysterious couple who shared a soda in 1942. I needed to know how this local romance unfolded.

Let’s back up.

A couple years ago, I was scrolling through a Baltimore nostalgia Facebook page when the smiles, the brightest parts of the black-and-white image, captivated me. The caption of the photo, taken by Arthur Rothstein, got me started: “Sergeant Franklin Williams, home on leave from Army duty, with his best girl Ellin Harden, splitting a soda. They met at Douglass High School.”

I initially discovered that this photo, and others that included Franklin Williams, were part of a series highlighting Black soldiers during World War II that was featured in the October 1942 edition of Look magazine.

The blurbs about the 41st Engineers, an all-Black battalion stationed in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, boast that Franklin enlisted in 1941 and rose to a sergeant within a year. The magazine also shadowed him for several days with his family, who lived in a house on the 2000 block of McCulloh Street in West Baltimore.

To learn more about Franklin and Ellin — who they were as individuals, how they met and, most intriguingly, what happened — I searched through newspaper clips, combed national directories for veterans, scoured censuses and spoke to family members.

Franklin graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in 1933, the same year Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. When asked what his post-high school plans were, Franklin told the Afro-American newspaper, “I do not have anything in mind or any plans as to how I am going to make a living this summer.”

Franklin was working at Curtis Bay Depot Ordnance when he voluntarily enlisted in the armed forces in 1941.

A newspaper clip from the Lincoln Clarion in Jefferson City, Missouri, reinforced my initial hopes for this love story: Franklin married Ellin on the last day of his leave, Nov. 9, 1942, in Baltimore. The Maryland State Archives in Annapolis had the physical marriage license, but something listed on the small, brown document sparked more questions.

Ellin, who was 24 at the time they married, was listed as previously divorced — a far less common status for women back then.

It turns out that Ellin had married James Hughes Carter in 1938 in Elkton, according to the Afro-American. I confirmed that this was the same Ellin by way of another newspaper clip mentioning that she was sick at her mother’s home, which matched the address listed for the Ellin on the marriage license for her and Franklin.

Ellin testified in court several years later, I learned, that her husband came home one day in 1940 and said he did not love her anymore and no longer wanted to live with her. She was granted a divorce in April 1942 and received a $300 cash settlement and $100 in counsel fees, the local paper reported.

I ran into a few obstacles trying to trace what happened to Franklin and Ellin after 1942.

Articles tended to spell their names differently. Nonetheless, I commend local newspapers for documenting even the most minor community happenings, which helped me fill in some gaps.

I also have to credit the kids — who are a segue into a different love story.

By 1950, Franklin is listed as separated in the census. He met Theresa Ricci through a friend when they were working in an employment security office downtown.

In the mid-1960s, Franklin married Theresa, who came from a traditional Italian family in Highlandtown, according to their children, Jon and Terry Williams. Their parents’ love wasn’t easily accepted by the Ricci family, according to Jon. Instead of admitting that she lived with Franklin, the family said Theresa “took leave of her senses and needed to go into a mental hospital,” according to family lore, Jon said.

But over time, the new Williams couple built a life with their children, settling for many years in a house on Ailsa Avenue in Lauraville — only a mile from where I live.

Jon and Terry weren’t even teenagers when Franklin died in April 1975 from lung cancer. They remember the family vacations and how their parents never spoke ill of each other. Terry credits her father for her love of jazz; he would listen to it every night after dinner while she sat at his feet and played.

Theresa Williams died in 2004. Theresa and Franklin have markers next to each other in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Brooklyn Park, with Franklin’s noting his major rank in the Army.

Jon and Terry, who both live in Arizona now, know of Ellin — but nothing more than the fact that she was once married to their father.

I wish I could tell you so much more about Ellin, but she continues to be a bit of a mystery.

There’s no record that she had children, and I didn’t find relatives who could speak about what had transpired in her life after the photo was taken. (If you’re out there and read this, please give me a shout.)

Sadly, only an obituary could provide some details, and even that spells her name differently throughout.

Ellin Harden Greene died in October 1985.

I concluded this was “my” Ellin because of the maiden name, the age and the schools noted: Frederick Douglass High School, Hampton Institute and Howard University. Those also are listed in the marriage announcement for Franklin and Ellin. The odds, I thought, would be incredibly slim that this wasn’t the same person.

Ellin remarried to Philip R. Greene, a retired accountant clerk for the U.S. Postal Service, who died in 1989. Ellin and Philip are named in each other’s obituaries.

At the time of her death, Ellin was survived by her sister, Betti S. Whaley, who was the president of the Washington Urban League and died in 1990. I couldn’t find a record of any children for Whaley, either.

Interestingly enough, Ellin was a long-time librarian at The Baltimore Sun before she retired in 1983.

Paul McCardell, who started as a librarian at The Sun the same year Ellin retired, said she was a character who “did lighten up the place.”

So that’s the story. The connection I saw between Ellin and Franklin didn’t last. But people, myself included, are still drawn to a moment in time captured by a photo that makes you wonder: Whatever happened to this couple?

The answer is simple: Love isn’t synonymous with forever. Sometimes a beautiful photo is the only proof that its spark ever existed.