There's nothing like young love, and Buddy Laing remembers the moment he first spied his. It was 1951, the first day of seventh grade at East Side Junior High in Little Rock. Sybil Todd was sitting at the front of the room, wearing a white cable-knit sweater with gold buttons, and she captivated him.
"This guy who was next to me was actually the son of a friend of my daddy's, and I didn't really know him very well," he says. "They lived out in Westwood, which at the time was way out in the country. I saw Sybil and I asked him who she was and he said, 'You don't want to mess around with her. She's just a spoiled brat.'"
The first time I saw my spouse:
She says: “I thought he was just as cute as he could be. He still is.”
He says: “She was probably talking to someone. She had real dark hair and she was a very mature seventh grader. She was a good student, she always made straight A’s all the way through, so she paid attention in class.”
On our wedding day:
She says: “I wore the wedding gown Buddy’s grandmother had made for his sister. It just happened to fit perfectly. It had beautiful lace and she had hand-beaded it. It was a wonderful thing to be able to wear that dress that she had made.”
He says: “We got married at 3 o’clock that afternoon and I wondered why we hadn’t gotten married that morning.”
My advice for a long happy marriage:
She says: “I think in a marriage it’s real important to communicate and share your feelings, and I think it’s important to do things together and with your family.”
He says: “I just do what she tells me. It’s not hard to do because we agree on almost everything anyway.”
This boy lived across the street from her.
"Later he told me the reason he said that was because he wanted me to be his girlfriend," Sybil says.
Buddy was undeterred.
Sybil didn't notice him then -- their eyes didn't meet across the crowded room --but that connection was not far behind.
"I was sitting at the front of the class and he came into the back of the room so I didn't see him," she says, and she would have, because "he was someone everybody would have noticed. He was tall, even in junior high. He had a good build."
There was small talk at school, and then there was chatting at The Hive, the name bestowed on the weekly Friday night dances in the gym attended by everyone who was anyone in their junior high.
"We all mixed and mingled and I think that was probably the start of things for us," Sybil says.
They went to cook-outs together and parties at friends' houses, and hayrides, too. And before Buddy could drive, his father chauffeured them on dates, driving Buddy all the way out to Sybil's house to pick her up and then all the way back downtown to drop them off at the movie theater and running that same route in reverse after the credits rolled.
"He was real glad when Buddy got his driver's license," surmises Sybil, who would, on occasion, spend the night with a friend who lived on the east side of town so she and her friend could walk with Buddy and his friend to the movies.
On Sunday afternoons, Buddy's father would drop him off at her house so he could spend time with Sybil, sometimes playing canasta with her and her mother and grandmother, and pick him up after they listened to the Lux Radio Theater program.
Buddy and Sybil went on to Central High together. He was on the football and basketball teams and Sybil was on the drill team. She was a homecoming maid; he escorted her across the football field.
"We were totally in love," she says. "I don't think I ever imagined my life without him."Buddy went to Arkansas Polytechnic College (now Arkansas Tech University) at Russellville on a football scholarship and Sybil went to Henderson State Teachers College (now Henderson State University) in Arkadelphia on a scholarship with the goal of becoming a teacher. They met most weekends back in Little Rock.
"Really, I don't think Buddy ever officially proposed," she says. "I think we just always knew we were going to get married. But he gave me my engagement ring on my 18th birthday, which was in 1958."
They were sitting in the car at a local drive-in as they waited for sodas and hot dogs.
The Laings exchanged vows on June 28, 1959, in Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Little Rock.
The newlyweds started classes that fall at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, making their home in the then-new Carlson Terrace apartments on campus.
Buddy was in the Army ROTC during college. After graduation, he was stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, La., for two years. While they were there, Sybil taught junior high and high school English classes in Benton, La.
When Buddy's military obligation was up, he and Sybil returned to Little Rock, where he joined his family's appliance business, Laing Sales and Service. Sybil was a homemaker until 1972, when she opened the Stitchin' Post, a fabric and sewing machine store.
The Laings raised three children -- Todd Laing, who died in 2013, and Greg Laing and Laurie Burnham, both of Little Rock. They also have three grandchildren, Nelson, Justin and Christopher Laing.
"I remember someone at one of our class reunions said to us, 'You still look at each other like you did when you were in seventh grade.' But I guess that puppy love has changed to a more mature love," Sybil says. "But we are still so much in love. We have never lost that spark for each other."
If you have an interesting how-we-met story or if you know someone who does, please call (501) 378-3496 or email:
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High Profile on 07/19/2015