Larry Fite was determined to finagle an introduction to a new girl he saw at church. It turned out he didn't have to.
He had graduated from high school in Long Beach, Calif., in 1960 and joined the Air Force the following year. While home on leave in February 1963, Fite was at his home church, First Assembly of God.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: “I melted into a puddle on the floor because he was so handsome.”
He says: “[I thought] this is a girl I think I could stay with forever. That’s what I thought the first time I saw her in church.”
On our wedding day:
He says: “I don’t remember much except when she walked down the aisle. I remember seeing her and thinking, ‘I’ve done the right thing.’”
My advice for a lasting marriage is:
He says: “Be honest with each other and listen. That’s worked for us.”
A longtime friend had mentioned she wanted to introduce him to her cousin when he was back in town, and he had just spotted the girl he wanted to meet in the lobby when his friend approached.
"She was wearing a plaid skirt and a white blouse and baby doll flats, and she was standing there by the water fountain," he says of the girl. "My friend came up and said 'Hey Larry, I want you to meet my cousin.'"
He was pleasantly surprised to find that the girl and the cousin were one and the same.
The girl, Stephanie Roos, was new to First Assembly. She was a junior in high school, and she and her parents were new to the church.
Her cousin had told her she wanted to introduce her to someone but hadn't been terribly specific about when this introduction might occur.
When Stephanie saw Larry -- or, more specifically, when she saw his uniform -- she says, "I melted into a puddle."
"He didn't even have to say anything," she says. "He could have been the dopiest guy in the world in that uniform because he was so handsome in that uniform."
That evening, Larry invited Stephanie to join a group of young people from church for sodas and french fries at Hof's Hut, a coffee shop where they all hung out. After checking with her parents, of course she decided to go.
He got her address and he wrote to her after he reported back to Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City. She wrote him back and they exchanged a few notes, but things really picked up when she became a senior in high school.
"That's when we wrote lots and lots of letters back and forth. I still have those letters somewhere," she says.
Larry says it's just as well that he wasn't around for most of her senior year.
"She was a high school cheerleader and she was busy with all that so it was just as well that I was away. But as cute as she was, all the boys wanted to date her," he says. "Fortunately, she decided she wanted to keep me."
He started undergraduate studies at California State University in Long Beach while she finished her senior year and then started college courses herself.
For a dinner date a year or so later, she prepared meticulously, thinking he might propose.
"At that time in our lives going out to eat at a very nice restaurant was truly, truly special. I wanted everything to be perfect -- the hair, the dress, everything," she says. "He proposed to me very sweetly but actually what he said teasingly was, 'Will you marry me and put me through school?'
"I was 19 years old -- I said, 'Oh, absolutely. Of course I will.' And I did," though it curtailed her college education.
She went to work at McDonnell Douglas in Huntington Beach, Calif., as employment relations officer, processing applications and helping people with insurance -- tasks similar to those she would handle years later as office manager for her husband's dental practice in Orange, Calif.
They were married on Aug. 6, 1966, in the church where they met.
When he started dental school at the University of California at San Francisco, she worked in the loan department at the university to support the family.
Larry retired from his practice in 1993 and a year later they moved to Arkansas, where his parents grew up and where he spent summers as a child.
The Fites have two children -- Geoffrey Fite of Palos Verdes Estates, Calif., and Jennifer Carter of Hot Springs -- and four grandchildren.
They have observed their 50th anniversary with a year-long celebration, traveling to visit friends and spend time with family, including a vacation in Lake Tahoe with their children and grandchildren, and a tour of their favorite spots in and around Long Beach. Stephanie created a photo album of pictures she took of the homes, restaurants, shops and beaches that meant so much to them in their early days. She titled it "Drive By Shootings."
They were really just kids when they went to those places together for the first time, Larry says. "We were committed to one another really early, and thankfully it's worked out great. She's been my best friend for more than 50 years."
If you have an interesting how-we-met story or if you know someone who does, please call Kim Dishongh at (501) 425-7228 or email:
kdishongh@sbcglobal.net
High Profile on 09/18/2016