Uvie Brown had just moved to the Vilonia community where Leroy Evatt had lived all his life. She saw him at a revival in the tabernacle at the Nazarene church and watched him from afar through several subsequent church services.
"His mother always did his white shirts. He might also have on some white pants or striped pants, but he always had on that shirt that was starched to the Nth degree," Uvie says. "He worked out in the farm and he was naturally a dark color, but he got even darker than he was. He had jet black hair -- shiny hair -- and it was curly but it was in waves."
The first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: “I decided I was after that little black-haired boy.”
He says: “Her blond hair attracted me, and her dark brown eyes.”
On our wedding day:
She says: “I wore a pale blue crepe dress with a pleated skirt, black and white shoes that I bought at Baker’s. We had a cake and punch there. One of my Aunt Myrtle’s friends made a cake for us.”
He says: “I guess I was probably nervous. I wore a suit.”
My advice for a long happy marriage is:
She says: “Talk about who’s going to do what. And each of you do what you want to — you don’t boss the other one around. And when it comes to money, sometimes it’s best to put it together and sometimes it’s not, but have an understanding about what you’re going to do about bills to be paid.”
He says: “Exercise right, eat right, keep your spiritual life in order — and marry a woman with money.”
She doesn't remember who spoke first.
"But I imagine it was me," she says.
Leroy, now 100, thinks it all started with a more subtle form of communication.
"I think we just got close together and didn't talk," he says.
Uvie concedes that might have been the case.
"Finally, he came to sit by me," she says.
They started spending Sunday afternoons with friends at a place they referred to simply as "on the hill," where there were rocks and running water. Sometimes, since they didn't have cars and Vilonia didn't have a theater, they would catch a bus to Conway, about 10 miles away, and watch a movie.
"We went to the theater to see Gone With the Wind. That was a big deal," Uvie says.
"Clark Gable said, 'damn,'" Leroy says. "That was publicized all over the country and it's still mentioned occasionally."
Leroy helped Uvie in school, summarizing novels for her because she didn't enjoy reading. And they participated in the various activities in school.
"We just did the things you do in a little community," Uvie says. "It was nothing big."
Leroy was a common presence at Uvie's house, too.
They were sitting in the swing on the front porch of that house early one evening when Leroy proposed to a 16-year-old Uvie.
"I think she cried," Leroy says.
They were married on May 3, 1941, after a three- or four-year engagement, in Uvie's aunt's house.
"It was just simple, that's all," says Leroy of the ceremony that took place almost 77 years ago.
Uvie wasn't nervous, she insists.
"We had been planning this for so many years," she says, though she wasn't sure when the moment came. "I thought I was practicing. I didn't realize he was doing the real thing. Everybody was still talking and some of them were still standing around someplace and I just thought it was practicing until I finally realized we were really getting married."
Leroy had started cutting his classmates' hair when he was in 10th grade, working in his cousin's barbershop.
"He taught me the basics. He retired and sold me that barber shop," he says.
Uvie went to cosmetology school after graduating from high school.
Their plan was to open a barber and beauty shop together in Jacksonville, but the war interfered with their plans.
Uvie left her job in a North Little Rock beauty shop to work in a defense plant in Jacksonville, getting up at 4:30 a.m. to take a bus from her apartment to her job.
"Now she gets up at 11," Leroy interjects.
Leroy served in the Pacific for 28 months, and when he came home he went to work in the Donaghey Building barbershop in downtown Little Rock. He later bought that shop.
"We really had the most prominent people of our time to come to my barbershop. We had governors, we had politicians, bankers, lawyers, the owner of the Democrat and the Gazette both were my customers," he says. "They had a lot of conversations in my barbershop."
Leroy is retired now, but he and Uvie stay busy.
They have one daughter -- Karen Welch of Little Rock.
Karen's husband, Sam, learned hunting and fishing from Leroy and Leroy learned golf from him. Leroy enjoys gardening, tending his parklike lawn and propagating various flowering plants. Uvie takes care of elderly relatives and friends.
The Evatts also have one granddaughter, Mary-Lee Smith, and two great-grandchildren, Molly, almost 3, and Connor, 6 months, who call them Wavie and Dado.
They cut each other's hair. "I haven't been to the beauty shop in 40 years," she says.
He makes her breakfast every morning.
"She's a late sleeper," he says. "I try not to have the same thing every morning."
She makes him dinner at night.
"She's been a great, great cook," Leroy says. "She learned in school what a balanced meal was and she still practices balanced meals at least three or four days a week."
They struggle to put into words how they knew they were meant to be together.
"I figured I had the cream of the crop," Uvie says.
"I figured I did, too," he says. "I did."
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High Profile on 04/22/2018