How I Met My Husband

This is the week of the anniversary of the day I met my husband.

The day was much like this one - Autumn in full bloom, the trees bursting with color. It was a Friday and I was a year out of high school, still trying to find myself. It was October 15, 1982. Ronald Reagan was president, nobody knew what a cell phone was, and the Internet wasn't on anybody's mind. People actually carried on conversations in person and did not text, if you can believe it.

A friend suggested we go to the annual Lord Botetourt/James River school football game. The two in-county high schools had a keen rivalry, and there was sure to be folks there we knew.

My husband-to-be was standing under the goal posts in the end zone (I don't think they let you do that anymore), hanging out with his buddies. Somehow or another (prearranged by friends, I think), we ended up standing together.

Conversation was slow. I asked questions about the game even though I knew football and didn't need the answers.

Finally, he asked me if I'd go out with him the next night. I told him I couldn't, as I had plans to celebrate my parents' anniversary.

After the game, I went to Mike's Market, located in what is now Bellacino's. He showed up there, too. My friend suddenly told me she had a ride home, and I should go dancing with this new fellow.

And so I did. We went to the dance hall at the Ramada Inn, which is no longer there (though the hotel still stands at the Hollins exit, and I can't remember what it is now). 

We sat and listened to the band, and danced some, but not much (he is not much on dancing) and had our first kiss.

The next day he called me and asked me what I was doing Sunday afternoon. I told him I was taking the Sunday school class to Walden Park off Plantation Road.

He asked if he could come with me. I agreed, and this he did. He didn't complain or anything when one of the kids threw up in the back seat of my mother's car.

And that was how I stopped being single. We were married a year and a month later, when I was 20. He proposed in July 1983 and we married that November.


(Though to be truthful, this was not the first time we'd met. We had ridden the same school bus for a while as children. I remembered him but he did not remember me, which is natural as I was four years younger. Also, he had shown up at our house a few months earlier with the volunteer fire department to help put out a brush fire that started when my father was burning a pile of debris. When I met him that day I was hot and sweaty from trying to help Dad put out the blaze. I don't think he noticed me then, either.)