Net Lessel played house with a friend when she was 9, and Earl P. "Pete" Vowell was always her make-believe husband. So make believe that Pete had no inkling of that. He was 16.
Net's family had just moved in next door to the Vowells in Linn, Miss., and she had found a fast friend in Pete's little sister, who was around her age.
The first time I saw my spouse:
She says: “I was just a child. I was just playing. I noticed that he helped his mother a lot. He helped her with the housework, cooking and cleaning and things like that and I thought I would like to have a brother like him.”
He says: “She was playing out in the yard with my sister and I thought, ‘Well, my sister has someone to play with now.’ I didn’t pay much attention to her. If they got along I thought everything was all right.”
On our wedding day:
She says: “I wore a blue two-piece suit with lace trim, black patent shoes and a bag to match. It was a great day. It was an exciting day.”
He says: “We got married in the courthouse, in the middle of the courthouse and there were people just walking all around us. My brother and sister-in-law were there with us. In 10 or 15 minutes it was all over and that started a nice, long happy trail.”
My advice for a long happy marriage is:
She says: “Each person has to respect the other person’s views and ideas. Love each other. We have been in love for years and years and years. Just be the best partner you can be. That will carry you a long, long time.”
He says: “Be able to give and take. You’re not going to be able to get your way on everything. We never disagreed over money. I always said if my love for my wife wasn’t any stronger than a dollar bill it wasn’t worth much.”
"She had a house full of brothers and I only had one sister," says Net. "I was just amazed at her having so many brothers, but there was this one particular one, and he caught my eye."
Since there were no boys in the Lessel family, Pete began helping Net's father with work on the farm and with cutting timber, and over the next couple of years he and her father became close.
In 1938, Pete joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, building roads and doing forestry work on the West Coast. He wrote long letters to Net's father about the things he saw and did in Washington and Oregon. Net's father, interested but busy, began asking Net to write back to Pete.
Write her longtime husband? OK, make-believe husband? What an opportunity!
"He would say, 'Write to Pete and tell him how everything is going.' I would just write him friendly letters and tell him how we were doing," she says, and after a while, Pete stopped addressing his letters to Net's father and started addressing them to her.
The young man joined the Army in 1940 and was shipped to North Africa, then to Sicily, Italy and France. He was wounded three times while he was deployed, the third time seriously enough that he was sent back to the United States for treatment.
It was 1945 by the time he was released from the hospital on a 30-day leave and was able to return home for a visit. He hadn't seen Net since she was 11, and the 17-year-old version of her looked "grown up," says Pete.
"Since I only had a 30-day leave I thought I better move fast," he says. "I thought about her and what I was going to do and what she might do. I wasn't going to be around very long and I wasn't sure she would want to get tied up with someone who was going to take off any minute."
The only way to know was to ask, so he did, over a few minutes of time alone they stole while their families were at her house for supper.
"He asked, would I marry him and I said yes," says Net.
Pete had to report to a hospital in Texas for further treatment a few weeks later. It was June when he got another leave.
They were married on June 9, 1945, by a justice of the peace, and left the next day with Net's sister and brother-in-law for Pensacola, Fla., where her brother-in-law was stationed at the naval base. They spent a couple of weeks there and then took a bus to the National Hotel in Miami, where they honeymooned for a couple of more weeks before starting out their lives together at Pete's new Army post, Fort Hood, Texas.
They spent years of their marriage apart while Pete served in Germany, Japan and Vietnam. He was away when their son Mike was born.
"When I came home [Mike and Net] came walking across the street from the bus station to pick me up. I believe he looked up at Net and said 'Hey, who's that guy?'"
They were deterred from joining Pete in Japan because of a polio outbreak that affected many of the other families on base, but they were able to join him in Germany for a three-year period.
Pete retired from the military in 1972.
"We spent many years away from each other but we never forgot what a good time we had when we were together," he says.
The couple, who now live in Little Rock, have two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Most of the letters Pete and Net wrote to each other before and after they married are gone, off-loaded during their many moves with the Army, but their memories remain.
"I wish everyone in the world had it made like Net and I," says Pete. "We do not have any problems. Children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren are well, and we go to Disney World and we just enjoy life, and I wish everyone had that."
Net has been married to her "make-believe" husband for 70 years now and the real thing has been everything she could have hoped for.
"We have lived happily ever after," says Net.
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 06/28/2015