Like so many stars of stage and screen before him, David D. “Buzz” Crouch couldn’t tell you who was his biggest fan after his sixth-grade stage debut. Blanche Turner watched the play with her older sister, and in her eyes, David was the star of the show.
“I was in fourth or fifth grade, I guess. David was in the play and I thought, ‘Ah, he’s cute.’ I did get to meet him that night,” she says.
David doesn’t remember much about the program, which involved singing by each of the two classes in his elementary school in Lexa. He remembers even less about Blanche.
“She was a little girl then,” he explains.
Flash forward a few years. This little girl had taken to waiting for the late train at the post office in hopes of getting letters from her brother, serving in World War II. She had grown up some - enough to be noticed, say.
David’s mother was the postmaster at Lexa. “A lot of people had loved ones in the service. They would come and wait for my mother to go through and give people their mail after the late train ran at 6 o’clock. I remember seeing her there, and she was cute.”
Blanche was 12 or 13 then; David was two years older. They were just one grade apart because Blanche was deemed smart enough to skip a grade in school. They saw each other a good deal when David started going to school in Barton.
“He was just always so nice and so mannerly and all that. I kind of fell for him when I was just a little girl,” Blanche says.
On Oct. 31, 1945, when she was in ninth grade and David in 10th, they sat together on the school bus to and from the Halloween carnival at their school. That was the first of many dates.
After graduation, though, David left for Hendrix College in Conway and Blanche went to nursing school in Memphis.
“I couldn’t come home to see her very often because I didn’t have any transportation, and I just developed friendships at college,” says David, whose three part-time jobs on campus also kept him tied up on weekends.
“We considered it the Lord’s will that we not date during that time,” she says.
God brought them back together, David says. After graduation, as he waited in Lexa for an Air Force assignment, his mother sent him to Blanche’s house with a graduation gift for her.
David’s sister, a nurse with Blanche at the hospital in Helena, also played a part. She would call her brother to pick her up from work, and then she would turn to Blanche and ask if David could give her a ride home from work, too. Blanche, of course, always accepted.
“We only had a pickup truck, and my sister would put Blanche between us,” David chuckles. “Something began to happen.”
They were engaged about six months later, while David was stationed at the base in Harlingen, Texas. Their wedding was set for Dec. 20, 1953, and David’s military leave started just the day before. When he tried to catch a plane out of Brownsville, Texas, it was socked in fog.
“I was thinking, ‘Oh, how will I ever get home for my wedding?”’ he says.
The fog cleared and he made it to Dallas, but there, the plane he was to board had engine trouble. He had no way of contacting Blanche, but she waited patiently in the dark for almost three hours.
“I got home around 2 o’clock in the morning, and I got married at 2 o’clock in the afternoon,” he says.
David reported back to the base in Texas shortly after their wedding, and Blanche joined him a month later. His military career took them to Savannah, Ga., and to Jackson, Tenn.
“We were in Tennessee when the Lord called me to preach,” David says.
He attended Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth, and then they moved to Arkansas, where he served in several small towns before settling in Searcy in 1973. He retired as pastor of First Baptist Church in Searcy in 1995. Blanche is retired from nursing.
The Crouches have four daughters - Janet Wentz of Little Rock, Joy Freel of Nashville, Karen Coulter of Fair Oaks Ranch, Texas, and Amy Durham of Searcy - and 10 grandchildren.
Every year on their anniversary, David buys Blanche a box of Millionaires candies, just as he did from a drugstore in Little Rock on their honeymoon, maybe to remind them of all the sweet memories they’ve shared throughout the years.
“The joy of the Lord is my strength, the joy of the Lord is my strength,” he croons. “It is the joy of the Lord we are experiencing, that we do experience.”My advice for a long happy marriage is: She says: “Be thoughtful of each other and always remember that God is the boss.” He says: “As Paul says in Philippians, the fourth chapter, ‘Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as Christ in God has forgiven us.’”On our wedding day: She says: “I’m just thankful it came off.” He says: “I don’t remember much about it, but we got through it.” The first time I noticed my future spouse: She says: “I thought he was pretty cute. He was a little black-headed boy, with curly hair.” He says: “She was a pretty little girl wearing glasses.” The first time I met my future in-laws: She says: “Was when I was a little girl. I loved them.” He says: “They were very accepting of me coming to be in their home anytime. They were very kind people.”If you have an interesting how-we-met story or know someone who does, please call (501) 378-3496 or email:
High Profile, Pages 39 on 12/22/2013