Susie Ivy was willing to go out with Carroll Luten in May 1963 because spending time with him meant spending time with her bestie, Susie Wallace. Wallace’s boyfriend John was Carroll’s roommate.
Susie doesn’t remember hearing much about Carroll.
“They just thought we would be a good match,” Carroll says.
Susie didn’t mind not knowing more.
“It didn’t really matter,” she says of her collaboration for a double-date with the other Susie. “We just wanted to be together. I wanted to be around Susie and she wanted to be around me.”
The work schedules of everyone involved made planning a double-date a challenge. The “Two Susies of Unit 8,” as they were known to co-workers at Southwestern Bell in Dallas, were often on separate shifts as long distance operators, as were John and Carroll, both stationed at Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth.
“It didn’t click for a while. Our times were all off,” Susie Ivy says. “But they finally got us together.”
The foursome went to a drive-in movie.
“We saw a 007 movie,” says Susie, who likes James Bond. Carroll really doesn’t.
“He thinks they’re silly,” she says.
But they had plenty else in common, and they quickly became inseparable.
Carroll had signed on for a tour in England before he met Susie. Once they started dating,he began to regret making that commitment.
“He told me about this tour and that he was going to be gone a year,” Susie says. “He asked if I would wait on him. At first I debated it. And then I said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’”
They had only dated a couple of months by then and she just wasn’t sure enough of their love to promise him that.
Carroll, though, was certain. He made the decision to get a short discharge, which meant he could get out of the military, out of duty that would take him away from Susie. Then he re-enlisted in the Air Force and stayed at Carswell.
Sometime in the midst of all this, they discussed marriage.
“He says I came out to the base one day and pointed to the calendar and said, ‘Well, we can get married on this day,’” she says. “He had already asked me, but he says I was the one who decided.”
They were married on Oct. 12, 1963, at Carroll Street Church of God in Dallas, not a church either belonged to but one Susie liked because of the name.
They were married on a Saturday night. They had to wait until Monday - Susie’s payday - to leave on a honeymoon to Charleston, S.C., where she would meet the Luten family.
Susie Wallace had married John a month earlier, and the newlyweds shared a duplex near the base in Fort Worth.The two Susies rode to work together when their schedules allowed and the couples had more time together than ever before.
On Nov. 21, 1963, Carroll was part of the four-man crew that refueled and serviced Air Force One when President John F. Kennedy arrived in Dallas. John, not part of that crew, picked up the two Susies and took them to Carswell so they could get a good spot by the fence around the flight line. President Kennedy and his party walked over and greeted them there before leaving the landing area.
The next morning, the girls boasted to their co-workers that they had met the president, just before the operator seated between them put through a call from someone in Kennedy’s motorcade to Parkland Hospital. The president had been shot.
Almost a week went by before all four were home at the duplex at the same time.
The Lutens, who moved to Brown Springs, near Donaldson, in 1987, have four children - Mike Luten of Point Cedar, Melinda Schales of Donaldson, and Karen Ayala and Lisa Gibson, both of Denton, Texas. They also have seven living grandchildren and are expecting a great-grandson early next year.
Susie Luten is just Sue now. The foursome broke up when the Lutens moved and lost track of their friends, but after 50 years of marriage, they are the best of friends to each other.
Carroll chides Sue for working too hard to care for him now as he deals with health issues.
“I take care of him now,” she says. “He gets mad at me sometimes when he says I’m doing too much, but he took care of me when I was sick” with a brain tumor 26 years ago.
“He took care of all of us.”
My advice for a long happy marriage is: She says: “When you get upset with each other, try to work it out. Try to talk it out.” He says: “Make sure you’re really in love when you get married.” On our wedding day: She says: “I was late. I always showed up late for everything. The wedding went on in time but I was running late getting ready. We had to drive fast from Lake Dallas into Dallas.” He says: “I was proud she showed up.” The first time I saw my future spouse I thought: She says: “He looked like Tab Hunter, the movie star.” He says: “She was a good-looking girl, and smart, too.”
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 38 on 10/27/2013