Like myself, she arrived here when people liked Ike, Little Rock had two daily newspapers and most TV shows were in black and white.
A hip-shaking chap named Elvis Presley, making Memphis (her birthplace) his hometown (even if Tupelo, in north Mississippi, claimed him) was checking into "Heartbreak Hotel," later to serve a hitch in the U.S. Army before rocking the world musically like no one before or since. (They just released a movie about Elvis, with a lesser known actor playing the part made famous on screen by Kurt Russell. That might work -- after all, who had heard of Rami Malek before his Oscar-winning role as Queen singer Freddie Mercury in "Bohemian Rhapsody." But Tom Hanks as Col. Tom Parker? The man whose two Oscars came for playing an AIDS victim and "Forrest Gump" in a movie by the director whose last movie had Leonardo DiCaprio playing Jay Gatsby? This I've gotta see.)
Back to the woman alluded to in the opening paragraph.
She married a sports writer though would not care much if Sam Pittman or Sam Spade (the private eye in "The Maltese Falcon" played by Humphrey Bogart) were coaching the football Razorbacks. She arrived with the coming of Bowden Wyatt to Arkansas before that fine coach, after two years, packed the Cadillac the fans bought him and moved to Tennessee.
Other than having a sister and some family members in Mississippi, she would not get overly excited that Ole Miss, on whose campus she attended a nephew's high-school graduation, is the new NCAA champion of college baseball. Or that the Rebels dethroned Mississippi State, another team of interest in her relatives' home.
She startled me one day with the disclosure that, after spending much of her life in Tennessee or northeast Arkansas as a preacher's daughter, she was not au courant on University of Arkansas sports. Not so Arkansas State, in her hometown of Jonesboro, where she achieved two degrees in education. She would mention seeing Criss Lacewell, wife of Larry, the recently deceased former ASU football coach, on campus between classes. She did not appreciate my occasional jibes at ASU as athletic wannabes.
But I doubt she would have any strong opinions about the scheduled 2025 football game between Arkansas and Arkansas State, other than to ask if I might be attending. Probably not -- I would be 70 then and, frankly, the game holds no special interest personally -- but thanks for asking.
If you have not guessed by now -- the early reference about marrying a sports writer being a subtle hint -- we are talking about my late wife, someone readers have come to know as my beloved Sue. Today is her birthday, same as that of track star Carl Lewis, Princess Diana and Olivia de Havilland. "You've got me outclassed," I often told her when all I could come up with for March 22 were William Shatner and composers Andrew Lloyd Webber and recently departed Stephen Sondheim, not a weak sister in that group but with the class of July 1 starting from the pole position in that race.
I write about her fairly often in this space. She has been gone since March 2014. More than ever, I miss her.
In choosing a mate (not settling on one until almost 40) I looked for someone of like values and common interests, although not insisting that she become a sports fanatic, which she could never be.
She accepted the fact that her husband wrote about sports, often well into the night, with passion that she lacked about the subject. (One time, flying together to North Carolina to receive a national award, she asked, out of the blue, if I thought myself more gifted than a well-known Arkansas sportswriter who had received the same honor several times. This one time, like Kay Corleone in "The Godfather," she asked about my business and I stumbled for words – while I suppressed saying "All day long".)
Best of all, she chilled me out when I became overwrought. She would gently upbraid me if I raised my voice to a newspaper colleague over the phone. Perhaps it is the way of a wife toward a husband (or should be) that she came to read me as well as my mother, whose approval of my mate strengthened me so during the latter's Alzheimer's-advanced decline.
When she stopped by the office one Thursday night in May 2002, I knew the reason. Mama had crossed what people now call the rainbow bridge. She saw me through that weekend and for the next 12 years until the angels came in the night for her.
She is buried in Jonesboro, in the same plot as her parents and an older sister. As stated earlier, I miss her.
Once, driving to Dallas for a doctor's appointment, we discussed funeral arrangements. Never too early to plan ahead, we agreed.
Out of the blue, she asked, "Would you mind be buried beside me?", not the question one expects going 70 mph on Interstate 30.
Not trying to crack a joke, but truthfully, I said, "Why not. I won't be around to say no."
Happy birthday, my love, and see you then. I pray.