Bill Welch was famished after a long day of work on the fall night he strode down Main Street in Jonesboro toward the only food vendor in town still open, but when he spotted Dorothy Ragusa, all he wanted to do was dance.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” says Bill. “It was late. Everything was closed up. I didn’t have any transportation so I had to walk. I walked down to the pig stand and I saw her standing there talking to two or three more girls and drinking a sarsaparilla.”
A pig stand, he explains, was what we might today call a barbecue food truck.
Bill introduced himself to all the girls, although Dorothy was the one who caught his eye.
“She was gorgeous,” says Bill, holding the hand of the love of his life and recalling how her auburn locks were a couple of shades deeper than his curls back then.
Bill’s hunger suddenly disappeared, and he told Dorothy he wanted to take her to Rock Palace, the town dance hall.
“She said her daddy wouldn’t let her go out there, and I said, ‘Well, with a bunch of girls?’” She admitted that, no, he hadn’t expressly forbidden going with a group, says Bill, who worked in pipeline construction. “I had to talk those other girls into going, and I got a cab and took the mall out to Rock Palace, and we danced until we closed them down. We danced every set until 12 o’clock.”
Dorothy thought he was a pretty sweet dancer, and she was glad she let him persuade her to go. Her father never found out about the loophole that led to their first date. He was at home on the family farm in Otwell, about 10 miles from Jonesboro, and she was renting a room near the business college where she was a student. Bill and Dorothy jitterbugged at Rock Palace regularly after that.
“I worked 12 or 14 hours a day, and then we would go dancing until about 12 o’clock. I put in a full day,” he says. “I never enjoyed anything more in my life.”
Bill and Dorothy were on Main Street again barely two or three weeks later when Bill decided he wanted Dorothy to be his dance partner forever.
“We were holding hands, jumping,” he says. “They were having a big dance, some kind of big celebration on Main Street, then. I had her by the hand and we were jumping on some logs to getto the dance floor. We were out on the dance floor dancing, and I said, ‘Hey, let’s get married.’ And she said, ‘OK!’”
Bill had introduced a buddy from work to Dorothy’s older sister, and that couple decided to join them for a double wedding ceremony on Dec. 14, 1943, at the parsonage of a local church.
“We got married at about 8 o’clock at night, and then we went to dance afterwards,” Bill says.
His family farmed in Dyersburg, Tenn., so he fit right in with Dorothy’s farming family.
“You would have thought her mom and dad raised me,” Bill says. “When I walked in they just took me over. I was just like one of their kids.”
Bill enlisted in the Navy after they were married, and when he shipped out for North Africa, Dorothy stayed behind, supporting herself through secretarial work.
Dorothy banked every penny of his military pay while he was away, and when he got back, they used that money to buy their first home and their first car.
Bill worked on pipelines for the next 25 years, spending time in almost every state in the nation. He and Dorothy moved to Jonesboro in 1962 to farm, and that was their home until just two years ago, when they moved to Maumelle to be closer to their daughters, Sharon Welch-Blair and Michelle Welch, both of Little Rock. Their other daughter, Debra Welch Marks, lives in Houston, and their son, Jerry Welch, lives in West Memphis. The Welches also have eight grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
“It’s been a great life and I couldn’t change it any way for the better as far as I’m concerned,” says Bill. “We’ve been just about as happy as we could be.”The first time I saw my future spouse:She says: “I thought he was handsome. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have gone off with him.” He says: “I thought she was gorgeous. She had auburn hair. It was real dark and when it got in the light it would just sparkle. And she could dance - I’m telling you we had a time.” My advice for a long happy marriage is: She says: “Be honest.” He says: “Be honest about everything. Always tell your spouse the truth.”If you have an interesting how-we-met story or know someone who does, please call (501) 378-3496 or email: cjenkins@arkansasonline.com
High Profile, Pages 35 on 12/29/2013