Bill Buchanan bought dinner for Sherrell Stallings before he knew her name, and she’d laid claim to him before she knew he had a pocketful of money.
Bill was in the Army and had just been transferred to Fort Chaffee after serving 13 months in Korea. He and another GI were exploring Fort Smith in a red convertible on Aug. 30, 1963, when they stopped at Beverly’s Drive-In, the local hangout. That’s where he spotted Sherrell and three of her girlfriends in Sherrell’s black Falcon convertible.
Bill strode over to Sherrell’s side of the car, arriving at about the same time as the carhop with their food.
“Bill paid for it,” says Sherrell, who was shocked and pleasantly surprised. “Boy, I was impressed. But I had already told my friends that, OK, this one was mine.”
She liked his looks from the beginning, she says - 6 feet 2 inches tall and about 155 pounds, with dark hair and gorgeous hazel eyes.
Bill says his pockets weren’t all that deep.
“Back then you could feed a dozen people with less than $10. I think I pulled out a $10 bill and paid for their food,” he says.
This big-spending tactic wasn’t the norm for him, though.
“I’m pretty sure that was the first time I bought dinner for someone I hadn’t met yet,” he says.
After talking for a while, Sherrell and Bill decided to go to nearby Mount Gaylor the next day.
“He brought a couple of his buddies, and some of my friends came with me,” Sherrell says. “I wanted to show him the mountains. We went up and climbed the tower and everything.”
Bill wasn’t quite ready to settle down, though, and had a couple of more dates with other girls in that new-to-him town before he declared Sherrell to be the one.
Once his mind was made up, it was made up for good.
Just a few months after they met, Sherrell took a sick day from her bookkeeping job at a Fort Smith tire dealer. Bill was in town that day and stopped by to visit her at her parents’ home, where she still lived.
“He was sitting on the bed talking to me and he said, ‘I wonder what your mom would say if we told her we were going to get married?’” Sherrell says. “I said, ‘Are you proposing to me?’ And he said yes. That’s how he proposed. He didn’t get on his knee or anything like that.”
They were planning a wedding for March 1964, but by Christmas they had decided they didn’t want to wait that long.
Sherrell was 21 and Bill was 22 when they exchanged vows Feb. 1, 1964, in a Church of Christ in Muldrow, Okla. The service was conducted by a man who had taught Sherrell’s Sunday School class for a long time before joining the ministry.
Bill had every intention of getting married in his Army uniform. But Saturday afternoon a week before the wedding, while he watched a ball game with Sherrell’s dad, her father abruptly asked if he had a suit.
Bill didn’t. So he was ushered off to a Fort Smith men’s shop where his father-in-lawto-be was a frequent customer.
Sherrell’s dad told the salesman to “fix this boy up with a suit.”
“I didn’t ask the price and the boy didn’t tell me, but I thought, ‘Oh, boy,’” he says. “Sherrell’s dad bought me the first suit I ever had. That’s what I got married in.”
Sherrell and Bill have two children - Robert Buchanan, who lives with his wife, Carol, in Maumelle, and Cathy Grassi, who lives with her husband, Tim, in Branson. They have two grandchildren, Emily Buchanan, 14, and Adam Buchanan, 11, both of Maumelle. They are also fond of their “granddog,” a Shih Tzu named Alex.
Family and friends are welcome to join them in celebrating their 50th anniversary during a drop-in reception at the Drennen-Scott Historic House, a historic site in Van Buren - where Sherrell volunteers - from 1:30 to 4 p.m. Saturday.
The Buchanans’ wedding date, what Bill wore and some other things may not have gone as they envisioned, but that’s no bother to either of them.
“Nothing we planned worked out the way we planned,” says Bill, a retired Gerber Products salesman. “But I guess it worked out the way it was supposed to. It’s worked for 50 years. I tell you, I really don’t know what I would do without her. We’ve been together so many years we even think alike. Sometimes I’ll say something and she’ll say, ‘You know, I was thinking the same thing.’”My advice for a long, happy marriage is:She says: “Be able to talk to each other and listen to each other, and be aware of each other’s needs. If you can do that you can stay together. I believe having a Christian home makes a difference, too.” He says: “You have to learn to give and take. It can’t be a one-sided affair.”The first time I met my future in-laws:She says: “Was when they came for our wedding.” He says: “Her dad was one of those guys who just looked at you real mean-like. He wasn’t all that impressed with me at first. But then he bought me my first suit.”On our wedding day:She says: “The weather was so wonderful. It was about 70 degrees that day and we really enjoyed that.” He says: “We came back to Fort Smith after our wedding and we were going to eat dinner and then we were going to Tulsa for our honeymoon. We didn’t make it. We went out with all of our friends to party that night. It didn’t go as planned, but we had a lot of fun.”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 35 on 01/26/2014