Morris Smith wasn't on Shirley Gasaway's radar until he took something from her.
They both grew up in Dumas but didn't go to school together. He graduated from high school the year she started junior high. Their families had long been acquainted, but the two didn't meet until the Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1954, when Shirley went with a girlfriend to watch a baseball game.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
He says: “I thought she was the prettiest thing I ever saw. She was a brunette, and she was very shapely.”
She says: “Oh, I just thought he was awesome.”
On our wedding day:
He says: “It was June 27th, and it was a hot day and I was rather perspiring.”
She says: “I was very happy. That day was a beautiful day, but that night was when a hurricane hit.”
My advice for a lasting marriage:
He says: “Be willing to give and take.”
She says: “You have to give and take. It’s 50/50.”
"It was a very hot day so I was drinking an Orange Crush. The two of us were sitting on the hood of a car watching her boyfriend play baseball," says Shirley, then 16.
Between innings, Morris walked over to say hello.
"We did a little talking, he did a little flirting," she says.
And then he reached over, casually and confidently, and took the Orange Crush from her hand.
"He took a big swig of it and that did it," she says. "From that moment on I knew he was the one that I wanted."
Morris came back over during later innings, but when the game ended so did their conversations -- until a few days later, when they saw each other again at the city's semicentennial celebration. Shirley, a majorette, marched with the band and Morris drove a National Guard truck.
She was walking into town from the school when he stopped in the big National Guard Armory truck and gave her a ride. Morris had to get going because he had other celebration-related duties to take care of, but before he left he asked her for a date.
They can't remember where they went that first time, but they do remember that her parents weren't thrilled that they were going together. At that time, he was attending what is now Arkansas State University, and she was about to be a junior in high school.
"There was a lot of age difference there, and my parents were not real happy about it. But after they got to know him they just loved him." When school started back up in the fall, Morris wrote to Shirley every day.
"Every day when I came home from school I would be really upset if I didn't have a letter. I looked forward to it every day," she says. She was allowed to call him once a week, and he would come home from college every weekend.
He couldn't take her to her junior/senior banquet because school rules dictated only students could attend. He was OK with her going with someone else so she wouldn't miss out on the event, but he was waiting for her when she got home that night.
"He got all dressed up for me on my prom night," she says. "I do have a picture of that. And I have a picture of us at my graduation." She joined him at school that fall. He finished college in spring 1957, and they were married a month later, on June 27, in the chapel of First Baptist Church of Dumas.
They were going to honeymoon in Gulfport, Miss., but Hurricane Audrey was blowing through, and they had to stop in Greenville, Miss., that first night. When they made it to Gulfport the next day, the beach was closed.
"We never got to unpack our bathing suits," she says.
Shortly after their wedding, Morris became principal and a teacher at a country school in the Drew County town of Collins. Four years later, after the birth of their daughter -- Morrie McKinney -- he was hired by a farm lending institution, Delta Production Credit Association in Dermott. He retired from there in 2002.
Morris now spends most days working on the family farm west of Dumas where he grew up. Their son, Brian Smith, runs the place. "I enjoy being with him, and I just can't get the farming out of my system," Morris says. Both of their children live in Cabot.
They are members of First Baptist Church of Dermott, where Morris is a deacon and Shirley is a Sunday School teacher.
"We have a good life," she says. "It's a very fulfilling life."
Shirley watched Morris play baseball in college, but no game topped the one where she first met him. He was the pitcher that day.
"But he was a good catch," she says.
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High Profile on 05/28/2017