Ann Graddy made numerous trips to Arkansas Tech's library for research -- she tagged along with a friend who was trying to get information about a boy. Floyd Hickerson, the subject of the investigation, ultimately didn't give the friend the time of day. He gave it to Ann.
"She flirted her head off and just got nowhere," Ann says of her friend. "He was working math problems and he was really into it. He just pretty much ignored her and we kept telling her we didn't think he was interested. But he would move his chair next to mine or he would ask me what I was reading."
Ann, a freshman from the Bee Branch/Morganton area, sometimes made herself scarce in hopes of giving that other girl a better chance of catching Floyd's eye.
Floyd, a sophomore pre-engineering major from North Little Rock, says that while he was intent on scoring well on his math exams, he was aware of his surroundings.
"The library wasn't really a place to socialize for me," he says. "I had tests and I went over there to study, but I was interested in girls, too, and sometimes they would sit at the same table."
Over the next few months, he started seeing Ann away from the stacks.
"I was staying at a house next door to the [Baptist Student Union] and I would go over there because the Baptists always had something to eat ... and have some sweet rolls or whatever. Of course, most of the time you were required to hear a little speech or something," he says.
But he didn't mind listening because he got to talk with Ann.
"That's where we really got acquainted," she says. "We could sit and talk for hours. We would get run out when they closed."
Their first date was to see an Elvis Presley movie at the theater in Russellville. Neither of them had a car, so they walked there and back.
Ann, a home economics major, had dated a guy from her hometown off and on in high school and she was still going back to see him from time to time. She and Floyd saw each other quite a bit, too, and in the fall, Floyd moved into a dorm on campus, which meant they ate most of their meals together in the cafeteria.
"That's when it got a little more serious," Floyd says.
Most of the engineering students wore slide rules on their belts. Anyone who walked close to them risked getting poked midstride.
"It was kind of a joke," says Ann, who walked close enough to Floyd on a regular basis. "I guess I kind of decided that slide rule was mine."
The engineering and agricultural students -- home economics majors included -- had a great rivalry.
"There was a big competition, and I really think it was because of him that his friends who were in it nominated me for Engineering Queen, which I got. That was a good thing and a bad thing," she says. "They had a tendency to pull pranks on each other, and I was stolen -- kidnapped."
It was the day of a big dance, and she had planned to spend the afternoon getting ready. Instead, she was lured into a car with some girls who took her to a house and held her hostage until after the event started.
Floyd gave Ann an engagement ring around Christmas 1962.
Her parents hadn't been able to afford college tuition for her that year, so she had dropped out and was teaching home economics and history classes at a small school in Alread. Floyd, too, had to leave college for financial reasons and was working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
In January 1963, they made their first major purchase together, a sewing machine, mostly so they could establish some credit. Ann used it to make her wedding dress.
They exchanged their vows on June 8, 1963, at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Bee Branch.
Floyd joined the Arkansas National Guard soon after they married and eventually went to work for Union Pacific Railroad. The company paid his tuition to Little Rock University (now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock), where he graduated in 1969 with a degree in math and accounting.
The Hickersons live in North Little Rock and have raised three children -- Alice Ann Fuller of Colleyville, Texas; Craig Alan Hickerson of St. Louis and Andrea Rae Hickerson of San Jose, Calif. They also have four grandchildren.
"I never thought, as a girl, that I wanted to grow up and leave home or move out of Arkansas, but I knew that with him it would be an adventure," Ann says.
She didn't realize that adventure -- and Floyd's career with the railroad -- would lead them to 22 homes in their first 36 years of marriage, but she wouldn't have had it any other way.
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 12/21/2014