She married a sports writer and while not being a rabid sports fan at least became conversant in the subject, all that her spouse could ask.
Some fellow scribes I've known might have lost track of those special days or to which ex they belonged. Pains me to say that one of my best co-workers seemed to hit his stride after a divorce.
Like someone in the newspaper back shop said one night, "Everyone should be married three times to know what I've been through." Another man, married three times himself, explained what must possess a man with a roving eye, "Just because you've played your order doesn't mean you can't read the menu."
To which, my beloved Sue said, "Yes, but you don't have to read the menu aloud."
This serves as an introduction to a tribute to my late wife on what would be our 27th anniversary. If you didn't know Sue, perhaps you have read about her, most recently on July 1, her birthdate. I even wrote a tribute column on July 15, 1995, when on a steamy Saturday afternoon at West Side Church of Christ in Russellville, Henrietta Sue Hill and Robert Alvin Wisener exchanged vows.
That story, carrying one of Melinda Gassaway's greatest headlines of her editorship ("The Best Man Wins"), contained a reference that we met in 1992 on Dec. 7, "a date that could have lived in infamy."
With God's help and Sue's love, our time together was much better than that. Just not long enough. My biggest regret in life is that she and I did not grow old together. God called her home after 18 1/2 years together, presumably needing a second soprano (or alto) for His heavenly a cappella choir.
I popped the question, as the saying goes, early in 1995 after 2 1/2 years of beating a trail between Glenwood, my boyhood home, and Russellville. Little did I know in December 1992 that she had just bought a house, the previous owner, of all things, being a former basketball coach at Caddo Hills I knew.
She was then counseling at Crawford Elementary School after previous stops in Wynne, Trumann and Dixon, Missouri, a graduate of Jonesboro High School with two degrees (a master's included) from Arkansas State University. One of her JHS classmates (class of 1971) was Scott Bull, who quarterbacked the Golden Hurricane to the 1970 state football championship game against Hot Springs, the Trojans winning at old Rix Field starting a glorious decade under coach Bobby Hannon with defensive overseer Joe Reese heading an all-star staff. Sue shared that Jonesboro aide Bill Reed, then on Don Riggs' staff before winning three state titles on his own at Jacksonville, played piano in her homeroom class, something that I shared with Reed's son, Scott, now coaching at Cabot after winning titles at El Dorado.
I am not making any of this up.
Sue also mentioned seeing Criss Lacewell, wife of the late Arkansas State football coach and Dallas Cowboys aide, when both attended college classes at ASU.
Unlike her husband, the sports writer, this preacher's daughter did not grow up in a household where sports and politics were often discussed. Born in Memphis and spending her youth in southwest Tennessee or northeast Arkansas, she did not feel an inherent passion for Razorback football. Our marriage survived the bombshell announcement one day that she really didn't care much about football and likewise about what problems Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson might be having in Dallas. I might have explained Larry and Criss Lacewell's connections with Johnson's Cowboys successor, Barry Switzer, or not.
We attended many Razorback games together, one year while she worked with a group serving pregame meals to the press box, sticking around and reading a book with her duties fulfilled. We discussed building a house en route to the Alabama game at Fayetteville in 1998, Arkansas winning in a rout but with the opponent's "Million Dollar Band" filling the sky with fight song "Yea, Alabama" before kickoff.
On our way home, we breezed through Glenwood and dropped in on a reclusive family friend who thought Bear Bryant hung the moon. Consoled by yours truly upon the previous day's Tide loss ("There wasn't a damn thing I could do about it," he said), the other man, widowed and childless, got out of his chair and went outside for a word with Sue, who was waiting in the car. Stonehenge, I explained later, was an everyday thing compared to that.
She lived to see our mortgage paid off and the birth, though premature, of a great-niece in Mississippi whose odds against once were high. I feel sure that her last thoughts were of Olivia, who then was turning the corner and is now a precocious child of 8.
As written here in 2014, shortly after her passing, borrowing studio boss Charles Bickford's line about departed ex-star James Mason in the 1954 version of "A Star is Born", you missed a lot not knowing Sue Hull Wisener.