Former neighbors' reunion a 'magical moment'

Toni Cameron and David Rankin were next-door neighbors growing up. “Toni was not only pretty and smart, she was and is a class act in every way,” David says. “She changed my life.”
Toni Cameron and David Rankin were next-door neighbors growing up. “Toni was not only pretty and smart, she was and is a class act in every way,” David says. “She changed my life.”

David Rankin always kind of liked the pesky girl next door, but he had to move away to realize he loved her.

photo

Special to the Democrat-Gazette

Toni Cameron and David Rankin were wed April 2, 1966, in Toni’s parents’ living room, where they had spent almost every Christmas Eve together since Toni was 9 years old.

photo

Special to the Democrat-Gazette

David and Toni Rankin recently celebrated their 50th anniversary. Their wedding day “was not a day that I spent getting manicures and pedicures,” Toni says. “It was my Cinderella day. I was marrying the guy I had already loved for 10 years.”

Toni Cameron knew David was "the one" right from the start.

The first time I saw my future spouse:

She says: “I don’t really remember the actual first time because I would have only been 9 years old. But I remember seeing him at that football game years later because that was like seeing him again for the first time.”

He says: “I just thought, ‘Well, that’s one of Mr. Cameron’s kids.’ But then at that football game, that was magic.”

On our wedding day:

She says: “I woke up early and went to the Junction City post office building and spent my morning pulling ivy off the building and I took it home and washed it in the wash tub and we used it to decorate a fan trellis that my grandfather had made. He was the postmaster. Then we put some flowers on it that probably came out of my aunt’s yard.”

He says: “I was excited.”

My advice for a lasting marriage:

She says: “I think it goes back to really having a shared mindset on the world, on faith. Share those deepest principles of life. And discuss those ahead of time, around the kitchen table.”

He says: “Faith is so important and having a commonality of interests and a common view of the world is, too.”

"I have loved him since I was 9 years old," she says.

Toni's grandfather had sold land in Junction City to David's mother and she built a house there in 1955.

"I don't think he would have sold it to her if she hadn't been a war widow," says David, who was 14 when he and his mother moved in. It just so happened that Toni's family had built a house next door.

Toni had lived there with her parents and little brother, Steve, then 6, for about a month before the Rankins arrived.

"Steve was kind of like a younger brother and she was, in a way, like a kid sister," David says. "If we wanted to do anything we had to do it with each other because there wasn't anyone else around."

She didn't think of him as a big brother, really.

"Oh, I just thought everything he did was wonderful," Toni says.

When she was about 10, she sneaked into David's yard and climbed a pine tree so she could spy on him and his friends. He spotted her, and the jig was up.

"He stopped what he was doing and called me out and told me to go home," she says. "I minded him. I went back home. I was embarrassed."

David, at 17, was the songleader at the Presbyterian church in town, and Toni, at 12, played piano. David called each week to let her know what songs she should practice.

He and his mother spent every Christmas Eve with Toni's family, and they gravitated to one another's homes throughout the year.

After high school, David went to Louisiana Tech University in Ruston for three years before transferring to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Toni was in public school in Junction City, still harboring her crush on David.

"We were living our own lives. I was even engaged to someone for about 48 hours," she says. "Life was just moving on."

When he finished college he got a job in Tennessee but soon realized a master's degree would garner him more respect. He returned to Junction City with plans to commute to Louisiana Tech.

Toni was a freshman at Tech by then.

Their paths crossed at a high school football game in Junction City. David recalls the exact moment he saw Toni in the stands.

"For me it was just, 'Oh my goodness,'" David says. "It wasn't oh-there's-that-girl-who-used-to-live-next-door-to-me. It was, 'There's Toni.' And it was some kind of magical moment."

Toni had a similar reaction upon seeing David, who was sitting with her parents.

"I just broke out in a total chill," she says. "I hadn't seen him in two or three years."

She made her way through the spectators to greet him.

"He said, 'It's good to see you, too, Toni.' And he promptly got up and moved and went to watch the football game on the sidelines," she says.

David has no idea why he did that. Over the next few months, he and Toni and their families spent countless hours sitting around the Formica table in the Camerons' kitchen, chatting over batches of pralines or fudge.

"We were just catching up, as friends, and then that friendship went on to the next level after we found out that we thought about life a lot the same," Toni says. "It was probably six months or so before we actually had a date. We went to see a movie."

They drove to the theater in El Dorado in silence, both overwhelmed by the first time they had been in the car alone together.

They were at Tech together in October 1965, and David gave her an item with his fraternity letters. He gave her his fraternity pin a month later and a month after that, he gave her an engagement ring.

They were married on April 2, 1966, in Toni's family's living room.

The newlyweds lived in Murfreesboro, Tenn., and Oxford, Miss., where Toni completed her bachelor's degree in elementary education and David taught at Middle Tennessee State University and completed a doctorate in finance at the University of Mississippi.

He became assistant professor of finance at Southern State College in Magnolia in 1968. He retired as president of that institution, now Southern Arkansas University, last year.

The Rankins have three children -- Curt, who lives with his wife, Candace, and their daughter, Caroline, in Magnolia; John, also of Magnolia; and Beth Anne of Little Rock.

"I know a lot of people talk about couples not getting married too young, but I wouldn't trade being a 19-year-old bride for anything because we had so many adventures," Toni says.

Their courtship wasn't long, but their relationship was built on a foundation of common history.

"I mean, I had always loved him," she says.

If you have an interesting how-we-met story or if you know someone who does, please call (501) 425-7228 or email:

kdishongh@sbcglobal.net

High Profile on 07/31/2016

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