RIGHT TIME RIGHT PLACE

She was fishing when she followed him to lake

Becky and Smitty Burgess
Becky and Smitty Burgess

Smitty Burgess barely gave Becky Staley the time of day, but when she followed him to a favorite fishing hole, he fell for her hook, line and sinker.

Smitty and Becky grew up in Little Rock. They attended separate elementary and junior high schools but wound up in the same 11th grade English class at Central High.

“Every day at noon, before the bell rang and we went to lunch, she asked me what time it was, and I had to tell her it was noon,” says Smitty. “But the clock was on the wall and all she had to do was look at it.”

Finding out the time was, of course, not really the purpose of her asking, but it was the extent of their conversation for months.

In February 1960, Smitty mentioned in a sparsely worded exchange that he and a friend were going to fish from the banks of Lake Maumelle the coming Saturday.

“My friend and I just decided to drive out there and look for him,” says Becky. “We did find them. I just told him we went out there to see him, just to say ‘Hi.’ And he didn’t catch any fish, but I caught him.”

Smitty had been slow to realize he was the object of her affection, and was surprised to see her there that day. But the sight of her and the meaning of her visit awoke something in him, and he asked her out on a date - that night.

They don’t remember what they saw at the drive-in movie theater that evening. “What’s important is that it just grew from there,” she says.

Smitty agrees.

“After our first date I fell in love with her, and I’ve been in love with her ever since,” he says. “After our first date there was no looking back.”

Over the next year and a half, they saw a few more movies, drove around town and dined at Snappy’s. They spent considerable amounts of time at Becky’s house.

“We just didn’t have the money to go out and go to dinners and do things that a lot of kids nowadays do,” she says. “Back then you stayed home and watched TV and watched sports with your mom and dad.”

“And we listened to a lot of Buddy Holly and The Crickets,” says Smitty.

He began calling her mother “mama” before they were engaged and was quick to help out with chores that her father, who had a serious heart condition, was unable to do.

His family didn’t have a phone, so every night he walked two blocks to a pay phone - rain, snow or balmy moonlight - to call Becky.

“I always knew he would call me,” she says. “They really were long conversations, and I just never really thought about him standing out there at the pay phone. He never said anything about it.”

During the summers, they were at Lamar Porter Field, near Smitty’s house, where he practiced and played baseball.

As their senior prom night approached, she made the usual arrangements. He was preoccupied with another young adult ritual: Smitty had chosen that occasion to ask Becky’s parents for Becky’s hand in marriage.

With that secured, he gave Becky an engagement ring before they left for the dance, where she had ample opportunity to show it off to their friends on a night suddenly made even more magical.

“We always just knew we would get married,” says Becky, who had by then applied and been accepted to nursing school. Nursing school, however, would have required her to live on campus throughout the three-year program; married women were forbidden from participating.

“We were young and in love and just did not think we could wait three years to get married,” she says, “so I backed out, much to my parents’ dismay, and went to work.”

They were married two years after they got engaged, on April 26, 1964, at Asbury Methodist Church, where Becky grew up, where Smitty became a member while they were dating and where they raised their two daughters, Cindy Chenault and Missy Gazette, both of Little Rock.

Smitty worked part time throughout high school at a meat packing plant, and went to work there full time after graduation. He eventually moved up the ladder to vice president and general manager. When Smitty retired from the plant in 1993, he bought Paradise Landing and Fishing Village on Lake Conway in Mayflower. Becky helped him get his business started, cooking for customers while he rented out boats and sold bait and tackle.

Becky and Smitty have three granddaughters and four step-grandchildren, as well as one step-great-grandchild.

“We started out at a baseball field and here we are 54 years later watching three granddaughters and a ‘bonus’ granddaughter four days a week play softball,” says Becky. “After all this time, we are just two people who love each other. We are so blessed.”The first time I saw my future spouse: She says: “I didn’t know he would be my future spouse. I wasn’t thinking that way about him.” He says: “I thought she was a pretty blond-haired girl, but she was annoying me.” My advice for a long happy marriage is: She says: “It’s not about me, and it’s not about you, it’s about us.” He says: “Having the responsibility of raising children and being a family together is a real bonding experience.” I knew he/she was the one for me: She says: “Because he represented what I wanted in life,what I thought I wanted in a husband and a father of children to come. I was willing to give up what was a chosen career that I wanted to have that marriage, that life with him.” He says: “When I looked up and saw her at the lake and thought to myself, ‘She’s come all the way out here to find me.’ I realized she was something special.” On our wedding day: She says: “I chose a song, ‘Whither Thou Goest,’ and to me, that was what we based our life on. It’s from the Book of Ruth.” He says: “I cried the whole time because she was so pretty and I was so happy. It was a beautiful wedding and all of our friends and family were there. It was just a special day.”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, Pages 39 on 05/04/2014

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