RIGHT TIME RIGHT PLACE

His spitballs were as lethal as Cupid's arrows

Sue Wilson might have stayed annoyed at whoever was pelting her with little, moist balls of paper on a bus trip with the Magnolia Junior High School band if he hadn't been so cute.

"I kept getting these little, what felt like gnats or something, hitting my back," says Sue, who was a majorette in the seventh grade.

She turned around to locate the culprit, and when she did, she asked her friends who he was.

"They said, 'Oh, that's little Mickey Fess,'" she says.

She noted his remarkable blue eyes, and thus began her internal conflict.

Mike Fess, then an eighth-grader who played the cornet, doesn't remember any of this.

"I didn't think I misbehaved that badly," he says. "Kids do a lot of things on band buses when they're young, and it's quite possible that we used the elastics on the back of the seat to shoot spitballs, but I don't remember it."

It wasn't until the next school year that they really got acquainted.

"My best friend and I had a conversation one day and we decided that all the girls in our class had already been around, so we thought that it would be a good idea to pick up somebody in the class behind us to date," Michael says.

Their first date was to a French-themed dance sponsored by either his high school fraternity or her sorority, or both. He already thought she was pretty, of course, but that night he decided she was beautiful.

"We dressed up as French people, and she had on this beautiful short skirt with a slit cut up the side and a low-cut blouse, and she looked very Frenchy and very sexy and that image has been with me for, I guess, about 60 years now," he says. "I was very impressed."

They dated off and on throughout junior high and high school, seeing movies, dancing, spending time with friends and driving through the local hangout, Old Hickory, for sodas and socializing.

"Band was a big thing then," says Sue, who was later a cheerleader, while Michael became the kicker on the Panther football team. "And he was a wonderful cornetist, and I accompanied him on the piano when he played in contests."

Their personalities were complimentary, she says.

An only child, she looked forward to visits to the Fess home, which was kept lively by Michael's five boisterous little brothers.

"It was so much fun, but it was like a zoo most of the time. I was very orderly. I had my meals at a certain time," she says. "I was definitely more shy, more self-conscious, and I began to really grow out of a lot of that."

Time marched on and Michael graduated from high school and began packing up to study architecture at the University of Texas at Austin.

"I was a freshman in college and she was a senior in high school and I didn't think it would be fair to her for us to be going steady during her senior year when I wasn't even going to be around. I thought she should be able to participate in all the events and the parties and what-have-you, so I broke up with her so she would feel free to do all those things."

They kept in touch, and she visited him in Austin once with his parents, but even though she missed him, she had started dating a little bit near the end of the semester. That's when he came home. The University of Texas had more students than Magnolia had residents, he explained, and he felt like a fish out of water.

Michael and Sue started dating again, both enrolling the following fall at what was then Southern State College in Magnolia (now Southern Arkansas University).

"We both just kind of knew we were going to get married. The biggest decision was how we were going to do it. Her parents thought she was too young -- and she was," he laughs. "I know that now. Now that we have 14 grandchildren."

He picked her up as though for a date on April 25, 1955, and they eloped to Greenville, Miss.

"We didn't tell anybody," she says, "until we got back."

They moved soon after to Shreveport, where Michael got a degree in physics from Centenary College. Sue was in school until she became pregnant with their first child.

They raised four children -- Greg Fess and Stephanie Tharpe of Little Rock, Michael Fess of Orlando, Fla., and Chris Fess of Frisco, Texas.

Sue is a Realtor with Crye-Leike Realtors. Michael is retired from engineering and real estate development and is now an author and artist. They live in Little Rock.

"It's been close to 60 years that we have known each other," she marvels. "He's always been good for me and he's always been my champion. He's my best friend."

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 on 06/08/2014

Upcoming Events