Joyce Aldridge’s friend hoped that fixing Joyce up with a friend of her date’s would give the two women a fun opportunity to reconnect.
That isn’t how things worked out. Joyce didn’t see her friend much after that date and has no idea where she is today. The guy with whom the friend fixed her up, however, has been in Joyce’s life for more than 50 years.
Joyce and her friend, Linda Hitt, were close growing up in North Little Rock and spent much time together as they went through high school, but they lost touch while they were away at separate colleges.
Joyce had just moved back to North Little Rock in August 1963, after graduating from the University of Oklahoma at Norman, and she was starting her first job with the telephone company.
She was a bit surprised when Linda called to ask her about the double-date.
“We were back in the same town, but really we had kind of lost contact and I really don’t know even why she would have called me to go on a blind date. We certainly didn’t run around together then anymore,” Joyce says.
It was an exciting time of life for Joyce, as she moved into her own place in Sylvan Hills and started her career. She was thrilled with the prospect of going out with a new guy and spending time with an old friend.
Allen Lewis, who was Joyce’s blind date, was a friend of Linda’s boyfriend,Eli Harrison.
“He was a friend and he was my insurance man,” says Allen, who was from Ashdown. Allen had graduated from Louisiana Polytechnic Institute (now Louisiana Tech University in Ruston) and by then had taught at Fuller High School for about a year.
The foursome went to a drive-in movie theater and had a fantastic time. But after that, Eli moved away and Linda got busy with her life - and that was OK with Joyce and Allen, because they had found each other.
They saw a few more movies together, although Joyce isn’t much of a movie fan, they visited relatives, and they played a good deal of cards.
In October, barely two months after their first date, Allen proposed to Joyce on the front lawn of her home after one of their dates. They began planning a ceremony for the following summer.
“We really wanted to do it right, with a June wedding,” Joyce says.
But another of Joyce’s friends called with an offer of a house.
“They were moving to West Memphis at the end of the year and she said she would sell me her house,” Joyce remembers. “I said, ‘Well, we don’t have any money.’”
She and Allen went to look at it anyway, and when the owners offered to let the young couple simply take up payments it was a done deal.
“I didn’t want Allen to move in without me, so we upped the wedding date to February so we could move in at the same time,” Joyce says.
They exchanged vows on Feb. 23, 1964, at Gardner Memorial Baptist Church in North Little Rock.
Some of Allen’s students came to the wedding, and one boy from the school approached him after the ceremony.
“He said, ‘I can’t afford to buy you a wedding present but if you’ll stop down here at the car wash I’ll wash your car before you leave,’” Allen says.
Allen was more than happy to let that young man wash off the mishmash of traditional paint his friends had applied to his Ford Falcon before he and his new wife left for their honeymoon destination, Vicksburg, Miss.
A week later, the newlyweds settled in their new house.
“They had told me if I paid them $1,500 they would leave all the furniture, so I did that and all they moved out were the linens,” Allen says.
All these years later, they still use the French provincial cherry dining room set they got in that exchange.
Allen and Joyce called that place home for 10 years, then built a dome house near Morgan, where they lived for another 18 years. They moved two years ago to Hot Springs.
Joyce retired as an engineering assistant from Southwestern Bell in 1991. Allen got his master’s degree in counseling after they were married and worked as a counselor for a while before leaving education in 1981. He retired from Arkansas Disability Determination for the Social Security Administration in 1990.
The Lewises hope their friends and family will celebrate their anniversary with them in the clubhouse at Forest Lake in Hot Springs from 2 to 4 p.m. Feb. 23.
Neither Linda nor Eli was present at their wedding, and they have no way of notifying them of their forthcoming party. Joyce and Allen aren’t even sure Linda and Eli know that the relationship they set in motion ended in marriage.
But if ever they see their friends again, they do have a message prepared.
“Thank you!” Allen says.
The first time I met my future in-laws: He says: “It was good. I think we played canasta.” She says: “I thought they were really sweet people. He had a brother and his brother had five kids, and that was a shock to me because I’m an only child. It was exciting and I kind of just stood back and watched.”
My advice for a long happy marriage: He says: “I always quote the poet Ogden Nash: ‘To keep your marriage brimming/With love in the loving cup/Whenever you’re wrong, admit it/Whenever you’re right, shut up.’” She says: “Know that you’ll have your ups and downs but that you just have to work your way through it. We’ve always just been real conscious of the other one’s feelings and we’ve just tried to work everything out.”On our wedding day: He says: “We got a picture of her dad coming down the aisle with Joyce on one hand and his other hand in his pocket. And I remember that kid washing the car for us.” She says: “We had a big reception and it was a lot of fun. And I remember my mother and dad weren’t really ready for me to get married so it was kind of hard on them.”
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High Profile, Pages 37 on 02/16/2014