RIGHT TIME RIGHT PLACE

Breakfast led to perusing bedroom furniture

Cecil Sutley still remembers the feeling he had many years ago when he looked out at her from the choir loft. “I thought she was perfect.”
Cecil Sutley still remembers the feeling he had many years ago when he looked out at her from the choir loft. “I thought she was perfect.”

Cecil Sutley was in the midst of a Sunday morning choir performance at First Baptist Church in Panama City, Fla., when his entire focus fell onto one girl in the congregation. "I had had a few dates with different girls and I looked down and saw her, this little Inman girl, and I thought about what it would be to date her," he says.

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Cecil and Ellajane Sutley around the time of their wedding, Feb. 15, 1942

The little Inman girl -- Ellajane Inman -- had recently moved from Perry, Fla., to Panama City to find a job near her brother. Cecil and Ellajane had met in passing at church in the brief time she had lived there, but they hadn't had any substantial conversation until he asked her out that day.

The first time I saw my future spouse:

He says: “I thought she was pretty and that she was the best person I’ve ever known.”

She says: “I didn’t pay any attention to his looks, but he was nice.”

My advice for a long happy marriage:

He says: “Love each other and never stop loving each other. Always put the other one first.”

She says: “Put God first.”

"I asked her for a breakfast date," Cecil says. "A lot of the good stores served whole meals, and a whole meal would usually cost a quarter. The meal they had at Walgreens was a special for several days, a full breakfast -- coffee, eggs and bacon or whatever -- and it was 18 cents. So for 36 cents we would have a meal together."

They had breakfast together daily after that, enjoying the food and each other's company.

"Her job paid her $9 a week, and 36 cents a day for breakfast every day was a big help to her," he says. "She didn't tell me that at the time. I didn't know until later."

Ellajane was saving up for college, as was Cecil, and she planned to serve as a missionary after that.

"We started going together, but neither of us considered marriage," Cecil says. "Neither of us wanted to marry because we couldn't afford to be married because we both wanted to go to college."

They were of one mind on this, so when Cecil stopped, as they strolled along the street one day, to admire a display of bedroom furniture in a shop window, his mind was not on that topic.

Ellajane, however, mistook his interest in the furniture and immediately began to struggle with how to respond to what she assumed would be an impending proposal without ending the relationship she very much wanted to continue.

"I wasn't even thinking about getting married, I was just stopping by the scenery but she mistook it, and she thought the next thing I was going to ask her was would she marry me, and she had already made up her mind that she would say no," Cecil says. "But she didn't want to break up, either."

As Ellajane laid out her reasoning for not wanting to wed, Cecil realized he actually did want to marry her then, so he quickly came up with a solution.

"She opened up and said, 'This is not the time for marriage. We can't get married now because we want to go to college,'" he says. "So I said, 'How about this? We'll marry, and I'll be drafted in the Army soon -- it's just a matter of days now -- and when I am, if I'm married, they'll have to send payments out to my spouse. You can take that money and go to college and then when the war's over and I'm out, then you'll have your diploma and can be teaching and you can put me through college with what you make."

It worked.

They exchanged their vows on Feb. 15, 1942, about a month after their first date, at the home of Ellajane's brother. She was 19 and he was 21, and the ceremony was held early and finished in time for each of them to report to church and to start the girls' and boys' Sunday School classes they taught as scheduled.

"We stayed for church and I don't remember a thing the preacher said that day," Cecil says. "It rained that morning and it rained that night. We didn't get back to church that night."

Cecil and Ellajane raised five children: Marie Dallas, Jeanne Hanson and Bill Sutley, all of Arkadelphia; Susan Reed of North Little Rock; and Jacque Goble of Alpharetta, Ga. They also have 10 grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.

Cecil's original idea didn't pan out. He was drafted, but their first child was born around the time he got out of the service. He went to college anyway, courtesy of the GI Bill, and he completed a bachelor's degree at Mississippi College in Clinton, Miss., followed by doctorates in religious education and in education from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.

He retired in 1987 from Ouachita Baptist University, where he served for 33 years as university counselor, dean of students and professor of psychology and religion.

That's when they got the chance to do the missionary work Ellajane had intended. They spent 17 months in Liberia, and six in Niger.

After almost 73 years, Cecil still remembers the feeling he had when he looked out at her from the choir loft all those years ago.

"I thought she was perfect," he says. "Now I know she is."

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 on 12/14/2014

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