Shelley Thurman's first conversation with Don Wold was the result of a little Russian rebellion.
Shelley was a junior at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1954. Don was a senior. They hadn't met, but both decided it would be advantageous to take Russian that year.
The first time I saw my future spouse
She says: “I don’t remember when I first saw him. I remember when I first talked to him. He seemed to be a very quiet person but we soon discovered we had common backgrounds and interests.”
He says: “I thought she was one of the smartest people at the Wesley Foundation and that made her a lot more interesting.”
On our wedding day
She says: “Don’s parents were there helping me do what I needed to do to get ready and I was racing around like a chicken with my head cut off, I think.”
He says: “I graded papers until 7 o’clock that evening. The wedding was at 7:30.”
My advice for a long happy marriage is
She says: “I would say it’s very helpful to have common religious faith and experiences.”
He says: “I suspect common interests help, but I can’t prove it — I don’t have any experimental evidence.”
"I wanted to learn another language in case I worked at another university," Shelley says.
"I decided French was too close to Spanish and I didn't want to take German. And the other thing is that this was the McCarthy era and McCarthy was a Wisconsin senator and he was making quite a name for himself and we thought he was pretty disgusting," Don says. "Everybody was fearful of Russia at this point ... this was just something kind of daring to do. You know, sort of in your face -- we're going to learn this language."
She and Don were in different classes but as Christmas neared, the Russian Club hosted a party and they attended.
"There weren't a lot of first-year students there," she says. "I think they probably weren't courageous enough to go, and there were all these advanced students and graduate students who knew each other well, and they were talking away."
Neither she nor Don were skilled or confident enough to attempt a conversation with them in Russian, so when they spied each other -- familiar faces from evenings spent at the Methodist Church's Wesley Foundation on campus -- they introduced themselves and chatted the night away in English.
Shortly after that party, they went home for the holidays, Don to Rice Lake, Wis., and Shelley to Evansville, Wis. But when they got back in January, Don called to invite her to the Wesley Foundation's annual dance in early February.
Their second date was a long time coming.
"He didn't ask me out that semester. But we were both working two or three jobs, taking full course loads. We didn't have a lot of money and we didn't have a lot of time," she says. "In the spring, my dorm had a dance and I thought, 'I've got to go to this dance.'" So she asked Don.
That was in May. Don soon graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics, and they once again went their separate ways, this time for summer break.
Shelley let Don know, though, that she would be vacationing at her uncle's cabin near Rice Lake before she started a summer job in New Hampshire, and he visited her there and took her home to meet his family.
Don was back on campus in the fall, working on his master's degree and Shelley was finishing her bachelor's degree in library science.
"We found some cheap dates to go on," Shelley remembers. "We would go to hear the university professional string quartet play and that was free and we enjoyed that. We went together quite a bit that fall."
The Wesley Foundation, too, was an inexpensive gathering place for them.
Over Christmas break, they wrote letters.
"I remember he had written me two very short letters a couple of days in a row and one of them said he had thought about the idea that we might get married," she says. "This is a scientist here. It was very cool."
After Christmas 1955, they drove with other students to Ohio for the World Student Christian Federation convention.
"I was interested in teaching physics overseas," Don says. "That particular conference was sort of a highlight and made me want to do it more than ever."
Shelley also wanted to see the world, and the trip gave them plenty of time to discuss a shared future.
She graduated with her bachelor's degree on her birthday, Jan. 27, 1956, and Don chose that day to propose.
They were married some four and a half months later, on June 11, 1956, in the Wesley Foundation at the University of Wisconsin.
Shelley earned a master's degree and got a job at the campus library while Don completed his studies.
In 1958, he started teaching physics at Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan, and they traveled there as Methodist missionaries. In 1963, back in the United States, Don got his doctorate at the University of Indiana at Bloomington and then did post-doctoral work at the University of California at Los Angeles.
In 1969, just before Little Rock University became the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Don was hired as a physics professor. Shelley went to work in the UALR library.
The Wolds have three children -- Sara Chiego of Memphis; Steven Wold of Norman, Okla.; and Sheila McKinnis of Little Rock. They also have five grandchildren.
They each put the knowledge gained from their college Russian classes to use a few times -- she to read the titles of books in collections acquired by the libraries where she worked, and he to decipher the goals and methods in Russian physics papers and even to translate a letter from a physicist.
Mostly, they say, learning the language was just something fun to do at the time. And it did bring them together.
"This is a very academic story," Shelley laughs. "But, yes, it is our story."
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High Profile on 06/12/2016