RIGHT TIME RIGHT PLACE

She had the keys to his heart, and to the theater

Cindy Scott held the key to everything Clarke Huisman wanted out of life, which initially was just entrance into his place of employment.

Clarke had just moved to Little Rock in September 1988 from Denver, by way of Santa Fe, to start a year-long internship in light and sound with the Arkansas Repertory Theatre.

The first time I saw my spouse:

She says: “I thought he was very cute. He had curly hair, and I was always attracted to guys with curly hair.”

He says: “It was nice meeting someone right off the bat who seemed easy to talk to.”

My advice for a long happy marriage:

She says: “Most couples argue and I think it’s healthy to argue but in the heat of an argument you do not say the word divorce because you’re probably not thinking everything through about the consequences of that word.”

He says: “You don’t quit. You’ve made a commitment to stick with that person through thick and thin and you work it out. I’m not saying there’s not ever a reason that people need to divorce but aside from something really serious I feel like you can mostly work out any situation.”

I knew he/she was the one for me:

She says: “When he helped me with a really heavy saddle we were using as a prop. It was outside of his duty but I needed help with it, and it was a regular every-single-time-we-had-a-performance thing. When I knew that he would go above and beyond what was required at work and he was just very sweet about it, that was when I knew.”

He says: “When I went home [and] realized how much I missed being around Cindy. We’re just generally so compatible. We have a lot of similar viewpoints, we like talking about the same things, we have a lot of the same interests, and I guess I missed having that person to be around.”

The next morning, Clarke walked across the parking lot from intern housing to the back door of the theater, only to find it locked.

"I hadn't gotten any keys yet and was pondering what to do when this cute girl walked up from behind and asked if I needed any help," he says.

Cindy let him in and they became fast friends.

Cindy was in charge of props. During shows, she was backstage and he was in the light and sound booth, but before and after they interacted freely. Clarke helped her set up and then dismantle stage sets and he did some of the heavy lifting for her. When they weren't working, the two of them could often be found hanging around with mutual friends from their field.

"It was such a cool thing to get to know each other that entire season and we were able to take our time becoming good friends and getting to know each other," Cindy says. "There were roommates of his that were teasing us about a little something going on, but we didn't seem to even be aware of it."

Clarke went to visit his family for a week around Christmas and he and Cindy realized they missed each other. "When Clarke came back to town and I realized we were both feeling kind of the same way about each other I told my parents that we were wanting to go out on New Year's Eve," she says. "They said, 'Well, we're going to a nice restaurant. Just come with us.' They always sat around eating and drinking wine and just having a good time so it was a wonderful first date."

The Rep had just moved into the building it occupies now, so the old building was a prime spot for an impromptu New Year's Eve celebration for staff and friends.

Clarke and Cindy went over there after dinner, and that's where they shared their first kiss.

Most of their dates after that were low-key, making dinner and watching TV at his place, going out with friends, chatting over breakfast foods at the Steak 'n Egg Kitchen into the wee hours of morning.

Cindy's contract was up that summer and she opted to go to work for her parents at Cantrell Gallery rather than renew it. Clarke stayed on through the summer and then, as planned before he moved to Little Rock, left for Berkeley, Calif., to work at the repertory theater there. He intended to stay in California to start a career in the lighting industry in movies and television by way of a master's degree from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Calif.

A visit from Cindy around midyear, however, prompted a course correction.

"That's when we realized we couldn't make it a whole season away from each other," she says.

Her parents asked if he wanted to come back to Little Rock and work for their gallery. Without question, he did.

They were working together again, this time at Cantrell Gallery, when he went to her apartment one evening and feigned a headache.

"I put the engagement ring in a Tylenol bottle and I asked her if she would get me some medicine," Clarke says. "She shook me out a couple of Tylenols and of course the ring stayed down at the bottom of the bottle."

"He had to point out that I needed to look at the bottom of the bottle," she says. "As soon as I did, I was thrilled and he proposed like a gentleman, and he had already asked my dad for his blessing."

They were married on Sept. 1, 1990, in the chapel at Second Presbyterian Church in Little Rock.

"Since we worked in theater we just thought planning a wedding is a lot like planning a theater production," Cindy says. "'We're just going to have fun with this and make it theatrical' and that kind of thing, and we had a lot of fun planning it. We had a blast."

Her wedding dress was designed by a friend who did costumes at the Rep, and well-known photographer Andrew Kilgore took black and white portraits of guests at the reception. They left in a 1934 Ford, which didn't exactly fit their 1920s theme but was pretty close.

The Huismans have one son, Christian.

They now run Cantrell Gallery together.

"Twenty-seven years ago I told my mom that Little Rock seemed like a nice place and that I would probably enjoy living here for a year," Clarke says. "That's what happens when you meet a cute girl with keys to the building and your heart on your first day of work."

If you have an interesting how-we-met story or if you know someone who does, please call (501) 378-3496 or email:

cjenkins@arkansasonline.com

High Profile on 08/23/2015

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