Hazel Knowles' first memory is of riding the streetcar with her grandmother to Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in Little Rock. She doesn't remember the exact moment when, years later, she met Weldon Grable there, but the day she married him in that church is quite unforgettable.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
He says: “I liked her smile and her temperament. She was cooperative and friendly. She has green eyes. Well, they’re ‘Hazel’ eyes.”
She says: “We got along well and had good times together and seemed to enjoy the same things. We were compatible.”
My advice for a lasting marriage is:
He says: “Every proposition is a 50/50 proposition.”
She says: “Find someone you’re compatible with.”
Hazel and Weldon plan to celebrate their 70th anniversary at Antioch next week.
Hazel has been attending the church since she was a toddler.
"My mother couldn't afford to buy the clothes to wear to church -- that was during bad times. And my parents didn't have a car. So Grandmother took me," Hazel says.
Weldon showed up years later, but right on time.
His father died on Jan. 1, 1938, and his mother picked berries and cotton and did other odd jobs around their home in Quitman to support Weldon and his younger brother. It was a difficult existence, though, and she opted to move the family to Little Rock in hopes of finding more steady work. She found a job as a seamstress, and the three of them lived in a couple of rental houses before she bought a house on Cedar Street in late 1943.
Antioch was within walking distance of their house.
"Distance didn't mean anything to us in those days," he says. "Occasionally we would be picked up by people in cars on their way, but it was nothing to walk."
Weldon, then 16, became an active part of the youth group at Antioch.
The congregation was so large Hazel isn't even sure she saw Weldon the first time he came to church.
"Plus I was so young," says Hazel, a year younger than Weldon.
The Bible class and its associated social activities gave them a chance to get to know each other, though, and after a year or so of group get-togethers, Weldon asked Hazel for a date.
He swears their first date was to a wrestling match at what was then called Robinson Auditorium. They went more than once.
She will not, however, concede to having spent her first date with Weldon there.
"We went to a movie," insists Hazel, who lived at 11th and Ringo streets then. "We walked downtown to the New Theater. It was a real treat to get to go to a movie back then."
Weldon graduated from high school and joined the Navy in 1945. The couple knew they were in love but didn't decide to get married until he got back, Hazel says. The decision was made in the back seat of their friend's 1927 Hudson.
"We have a lot of good memories from that car," Weldon interjects.
On the day they decided to get married, the friend, Doug Perdue, was driving them to Delight, where he and Weldon were to sing with a church quartet, which (as a side note) was to be performed on April 12, 1945, on the radio -- the day President Franklin D. Roosevelt died.
"That pre-empted our program schedule and we never did go back after that," Weldon explains.
Hazel and Weldon were married on Nov. 8, 1946.
"I got my wedding dress on sale at Blass because I worked there and got a discount. I probably couldn't have afforded it without that," she says. "He wore a good-looking three-piece suit. It's even got a little stripe in it."
A friend from church dropped them off at the Majestic Hotel in Hot Springs for a honeymoon, and they took the bus back home to Little Rock when the weekend was over.
"We just walked the streets of Hot Springs and visited what Hot Springs had to offer," Weldon says. "I had not been there before, and neither had she." He had to be back on the job in the clerical division of the Veterans Administration that Monday morning.
Weldon is retired from the insurance business, a career he started when he was in his 50s, following several years in the burgeoning mobile phone and paging industry in the 1970s with a company that moved to North Carolina. Hazel is retired from the Little Rock School District's cafeteria services.
They have five children: Phillip Grable and Scott Grable, both of Bryant; Janice Smith of Conway; Terri Clower of Vilonia; and Christie Hall of Greenbrier. They have 11 grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild.
Their family is hosting a drop-in anniversary celebration for them from 2-4 p.m. on Nov. 6 at Antioch, 5300 Stagecoach Road in Little Rock.
The years have flown by, but they are full of joyful recollections.
"I'd have to reach way back in my memory to ever remember the time that we had an argument that was of a serious nature," Weldon says. "We've just never gone through that."
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High Profile on 10/30/2016