Jerry Yeric admired a girl who strolled by his seat before each Western civilization class at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Mich., the fall semester of 1958. "I had been watching her legs walk past me all that time."
"I could have described her -- she wore loafers, bobby socks, pleated skirts and nice sweaters with her initials on them -- but I didn't know her name."
The first time I saw my future spouse,
She says: “He had these big brown eyes, and he winked at me. I thought there was a great character in there and I knew I wanted to know him better.”
He says: “I watched her legs go by every day in class. She wore loafers, bobby socks, pleated skirts, nice sweaters with her initials on them, and I watched this all semester.”
On our wedding day,
She says: “My mom went nuts over the wedding. I had a lovely formal dress and she had gotten me a hat, gloves, a dress and heels that were for going-away, but after the wedding I put on my T-shirt and shorts and said, ‘Mom, I’m married now.’ She loved it.”
He says: “I wore tails for the one and only time in my life. We were married by [folk singer] Paul [Stookey]’s brother.”
My advice for a long happy marriage,
She says: “Find your passion. If you choose to partner with someone, find someone who has a passion as well, and both of you explore that. Be yourself and the other person has to be himself and everything is going to work out.”
He says: “Communication is vital. Never go to sleep without resolving an issue. Don’t sleep on something that bugs you. Don’t sleep on something that’s going to fester. And also explore new frontiers. Be flexible and try new things.”
A year later, he met a girl in art class who insisted he should meet her roommate. He told her to set it all up.
The roommate, Peggy Munson, was all for it, too.
"I've always loved meeting people so that sounded like fun to me," says Peggy, who was told this guy shared her zest for life. "I said, 'Sure, I'll meet somebody new. Why not?'"
Peggy's friend suggested they go to a Detroit Tigers baseball game, which made the whole thing even more appealing to Peggy, a fan of baseball and the Tigers.
"I was as interested in that as I was in meeting this guy," she says.
Jerry met them there. She recognized him instantly from that Western civilization class, and when he winked at her, she says, she had what the French call coup de foudre (love at first sight), as if being hit by a thunderbolt.
Jerry was similarly shocked to find that the pretty girl in front of him was the one he had admired as she walked by so many times before.
Today, he calls it "a nice surprise." He might have been more ebullient then.
He impressed her with his knowledge of the game.
"We just had a good time," Peggy says. "We had good players at that time, and we talked about baseball and I could tell he knew baseball even better than I did, and that intrigued me."
They were sophomores then, Jerry majoring in political science and Peggy majoring in nutrition. They had classes and student teaching responsibilities and Jerry had to be in the residence hall by 7 p.m. but, during the hours in between, they walked and talked.
"Sometimes the talks on those walks would have something substantive, something from our classes or something, and sometimes those walks would be playful. But we did this every day so it didn't really matter," he says.
Rain, snow, sleet or shine, they strode all over the city.
"[The weather] didn't stop me because that was my time with him," Peggy says.
Jerry saved his money and bought an engagement ring for her the summer before their senior year. He took the train to her house in Detroit from his own in Battle Creek, Mich., to see her when he could. His dad worked for the railroad so he got free train tickets.
He proposed in her car when she picked him up. "I had had a few hours on that train to think about it and it was the right thing and the right time and the sooner the better."
It was so early when they got to her house that morning that her mother still had curlers in her hair and had just put on the coffee pot. Her father stumbled, sleepy-eyed, down the stairs right after they got there, and that's when they gave them the happy news.
They were married on June 23, 1962, at Grosse Pointe Presbyterian Church in Grosse Pointe, Mich.
Jerry and Peggy had accepted teaching jobs in Cleveland, Jerry at the high school and Peggy in a junior high, and they started work that fall.
Jerry soon decided graduate school was a better fit for him, though, and when he finished he secured a position teaching at the University of North Texas in Denton. They settled in Hot Springs Village after his retirement in 2002.
They have two sons, Greg Yeric of Austin, Texas, and Michael Yeric of Houston. They also have six grandchildren.
Peggy worked for years at American Airlines, and she and Jerry have made amazing memories taking spontaneous trips, finding new places to walk around and explore.
Back when they were in college, they shared a fascination with architecture, and a love of Frank Lloyd Wright in particular. Their walks carried them past one house with a Wright look to it, and she remarked that it looked like a really cool house.
"He said, 'Well, we should just go knock on the door.' I was thinking, 'Oh, my gosh, Jerry, no we can't do that,'" she says. "He knocked on the door and the gentleman who designed the house just happened to be there and he said, 'Come on in. I'll show you around.' That happens to be how we've lived our life. We've just kind of had that kind of experience over and over again."
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 01/25/2015