LITTLE ROCK — Verle Methvin expected her relationship with Bill LaFarra would be fleeting, lasting only the brief time she rode next to him in the back seat of his best friend's car on the way back to her dormitory in 1945.
Instead, she has seen him almost every day for more than 60 years.
Verle grew up in Ruleville, Miss., and was in nursing school in Greenwood, Miss., Bill's hometown. Bill had just returned from military service in World War II.
She had gone to a movie theater that night, and she and her friends were walking back to school when Bill and his best friend drove by in the friend's car.
The friend was dating one of their classmates and there had been talk of arranging a date with another student and Bill.
Bill got into the backseat and two of the girls got into the front seat with his friend for the ride back. Verle's only option was to get into the back seat next to Bill.
"He was a blond, clean-cut young man," says Verle, who didn't mind her seating assignment one bit. "I thought he was cute."
Bill, who was 19, did most of the talking.
"I just sat there and stared at him and giggled, I'm sure," Verle says.
Nursing students had a 10 p.m. curfew and it was about 9 when the boys dropped Verle and her friends off at school.
But Verle saw Bill again just days later at a birthday party for another nursing student.
"They said they were going to have watermelons at the city park - of course I liked watermelons so I just showed up," says Bill, who walked to the party because he didn't have acar and the friend who had one had other plans. "I thought, well it would be something to eat and some girls there and just a good time."
He and Verle struck up a conversation.
"We just hit it off," she says.
Bill can't remember if he made plans for a date with Verle then or if he called her at the dorm later.
"I probably did line up something," he says. "The big thing was to just go to the drugstore to get a Coke or to go to the movie."
Bill and Verle were serious about each other right away, but they knew they couldn't marry until Verle finished nursing school; nursing students who married were kicked out of school immediately.
"We dated every time I could get out," she says.
Bill would, on occasion, sneak into the hospital to see Verle while she was on duty.
"That was a no-no, but he was always pleasant to my supervisor and she liked him so she didn't tell on him," Verle says.
They stole a few minutes hereand there chatting in the halls or hiding in the stairways before Verle had to return to work and Bill had to sneak back out.
Bill visited Verle in New Orleans as often as he could during the six months she spent there completing her nurse's training, driving from Tennessee, where he was in radio trade school.
He proposed to her there, showing her the engagement ring he had bought for her and teasing her by saying, "Beg me for it."
"I said, 'You beg me to take it,'" Verle laughs. "He wasn't worried. He knew I was going to say yes."
Verle's supervisors asked her when she was going to get married and she turned the question on them.
"I said, 'When is graduation?'" she says. "They looked it up for me."
Verle and Bill made plans for a wedding the day after graduation.
They were married at 10 a.m. May 26, 1948, in First Methodist Church in Greenwood.
The pastor initially thought the ceremony would be in his office, but when student nurses heard about the wedding, several showed up to watch Bill and Verle exchange their vows. The wedding was moved to the sanctuary, with the nurses and the couple's families looking on.
Bill, who was 21, and Verle, who was 20, rode the bus to Memphis for a short honeymoon, spending the weekend windowshopping and eating a meal or two out before catching the bus back to their little furnished apartment in Greenwood.
The LaFarras moved to Mc-Gehee, where they live now, in 1952.
Bill retired as an electronic technician with Union Pacific Railroad in 1989, and Verle retired the same year from Beverly Enterprises.
They have three children - Janice Ramsey of Arkadelphia, Dolores Brown of Warren and Nancy Abernathy of McGehee. They also have six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, as well as seven step-great-grandchildren.
They plan to celebrate their 60th anniversary with a crawfish boil with their family, in honor of the part of their courtship spent in New Orleans.
"We're very good friends," says Verle of her husband. "We have a great time, we travel and we enjoy being together." If you have an interesting how-we-met story or know someone who does, please call (501) 378-3496 or e-mail: cjenkins@arkansasonline.com
High Profile, Pages 52 on 05/18/2008