LITTLE ROCK — Joyce Gray could have danced circles around Frank Eugene Ray, but she opted for square dancing with him instead.
She liked to dance and so did Frank’s older sister, who was Joyce’s co-worker at Hudson’s, a department store in Detroit in 1947. They decided to go to the Campus Ballroom downtown, open to people of all ages and relationship statuses.
“But we had to have an escort, so my friend says, ‘I’ll bring my brother. He just got discharged from the Army.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ll bring this fellow that I know,’” says Joyce, who was 18.
Frank, the aforementioned brother, wouldn’t have chosen dancing from a short list of activities.
“I was not a good dancer. I’ve got two left feet, that’s my trouble, and I didn’t want to be embarrassed,” says Frank, who was 21. “But I wanted to go just to meet some people and do something. I’d been in the service for two years and I had to get back in circulation.”
On the appointed night, Joyce donned a pretty gown, and she and her date met Frank and his sister for an evening of fancy footwork.
“When I first saw him, I thought, ‘He’s tall, he’s good-looking,’ and I thought, ‘You know, I wouldn’t mind making a date with him sometime or something,’” Joyce says. “But he was shy. He didn’t have much to say and he didn’t dance that much. He danced a little with his sister, and then he would go up and sit in the bleachers. And I, of course, took off dancing with my escort that I brought.”
Their only real interaction that night was a little square dancing.
Frank says he probably would have asked her to dance with him had she not had a date.
“I didn’t want to be disrespectful,” he explains.
The next week, Joyce and her friend decided to go dancing again, but this time, Joyce left her fellow behind.
That, in Frank’s opinion, was a good sign.
“I didn’t say anything, but I thought maybe since she came by herself, maybe she kind of liked me,” he says.
That night, they did dance together - waltzes, fox trots, two-steps, a little jitterbugging, and square dancing. When they weren’t dancing, Frank was sitting in the bleachers, but this time Joyce was sitting with him.
Sometime after the third trip to the ballroom, Frank asked Joyce if she would like to go somewhere other than dancing with him.
Their first date was to the theater, where they watched the movie California, starring Ray Milland and Barbara Stanwyck.
“When we came out, she had on open-toed shoes and it was snowing,” Frank remembers. “There, everybody rode street cars and buses so I had to get a cab because the snow was deep and she couldn’t really do too much walking around in open-toed shoes.”
It wasn’t long before they hung up their dancing shoes, opting for activities that made Frank feel more at ease, things like movies, listening to records at Joyce’s house,dinners out and playing cards with friends.
At the end of each date, Frank would hop on the streetcar with Joyce and escort her home.
“I would ask him in for a little bit, maybe for an hour, and then he’d get going because he’d have to go to work the next morning. He’d get back on that streetcar, and he had to take two streetcars to go home,” she says.
Joyce knew they would probably get married, but she didn’t know when that would be because Frank was helping to support his mother.
Frank went home to Tennessee to see his mother about 10 months after they started dating, and he told his family he was getting married.
“I didn’t want to push him or anything. But I guess when he went down there he told them he was planning on getting married and his brothers were going to have to take over supporting his mother,” Joyce says.
They were married on Jan. 10, 1948, almost a year to the day of their ballroom introduction, in a simple ceremony in the chapel of Immanuel Lutheran Church in Detroit.
“And it was nice. After our dates, he didn’t have to go home on that streetcar,” she says. “After we got married he got to go home with me all the time.”
The Rays have three children - Kathy Fazekas of Hillman, Mich., Patricia Berry of Monroe, Mich., and Duane Ray of Dardanelle, which is about 10 miles from the Rays’ home in Delaware. They have seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
Joyce says they haven’t danced together much since they met.
“I do, sometimes, around the house by myself,” she says. “But he is still escorting me.”After our first date: He says: “I thought, ‘I’ve got a keeper here.’” She says: “I thought maybe someday I would like to marry him, if he would ask me.” On our wedding day: She says: “I hoped it was forever.” He says: “I thought, ‘Well, this is ’til death do us part.’ And I was ready for it.”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 41 on 02/17/2013