Bill Canady was trying to stay cool on a hot day when he saw Evelyn Dugger, a breath of fresh air, sitting inside an open window across the way.
North Little Rock High School, where Bill was a freshman in 1947, had no air conditioning, so Bill and his friends passed the time before homeroom by gazing out an open window at the end of the hall.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: “I just thought he was a very good-looking fellow. He was smiling and he seemed extremely happy and he was pleasant and he had red hair and I thought he looked really fun. He had a real sweet way about him.”
He says: “I saw her when I looked through the window outside like I normally did and then after that I didn’t even look outside anymore, I just looked at her. I met her outside the office as she left one day and talked to her. She wasn’t much interested in me but I certainly was interested in her.”
On our wedding day:
She says: “I had a normal day at school and it was really hard to concentrate knowing I was going to get married that evening. But I was excited and happy and a little unsure about what we were doing. Everything was just all rolled together, but we knew we were in love and everything is OK when you know that.”
He says: “The most important memory I have is of how beautiful my wife was and how proud I was of her. We were just as happy as we could be.”
My advice for a long happy marriage is:
She says: “Love the Lord and know that he is first in your life and there isn’t anything you can’t bring to him. Communication is No. 1 — don’t let a barrier begin. Just talk to each other and work it out.”
He says: “If you have her sitting beside you and someone passes you two pieces of cake and one is bigger, do you give the biggest piece to her? You have to put her first. … We go to movies that I hate and we go to movies that she hates but she gets to pick every other one.”
Evelyn, an honor student, was sitting across the way just inside another open window, working as a monitor for the vice principal.
"I had my back to him and I was answering the phone and writing down what people said. He zeroed in on me and watched me and then he started talking to me through the window," says Evelyn, a junior then. "I was so afraid the vice principal would come in and hear me talking and she would think I was not doing my job."
Bill handed Evelyn, a junior, a note outside the office, suggesting they should get together and talk. She demurred -- her focus was on schoolwork -- but he wasn't going to be brushed off.
"He kept bringing notes, every day. This went on for quite some time," she says.
Evelyn's mother often hosted parties -- often centered on popcorn or homemade fudge -- for a group of kids from church that Evelyn had known all her life.
Bill started going to her church so he could get to know her better.
"It turned out he lived about 10 blocks from where I lived," Evelyn says. "He said, 'Well, we could walk home from school and I'll tell you all about it.' It was kind of slow getting started. I wasn't really into boys. I was just trying to get through school and I was trying to get all my subjects together."
He started carrying her books home after school, and she continued putting him off.
"I said, 'You know, I'm going to nursing school and it's going to take a while and it's really hard,'" she says.
Bill played football, but he told her he was going to quit the team.
"He said to me one day, 'You know, I really like you. I hope that you get to like me,'" she says. "He said, 'I'm going to give football up so we can have more time together.' I didn't really know what to say because he loved football and he was perfect for it. He said, 'Well, football is really good. But I think I enjoy our time together better.'"
Evelyn noticed that on one of the days her mother invited her friends over for a party, none of the boys showed up, but she didn't know why until many years later.
"I was getting jealous so I left early one night and met each one of them at the door and talked to them," Bill says. "It was a serious conversation for boys. I wanted them to know that if they weren't seriously interested I was interested and I didn't want to have opposition. So they stopped coming."
He remained persistent, even after she graduated and started living in the nurses' dormitory and he only had a brief opportunity to see her each day. He would walk several blocks from his house to take a bus to Little Rock, then hop on a trolley and then walk the rest of the way, just for a chance to split a hamburger with her on the lawn of the state Capitol.
"She had an opportunity between 7 and 8:30 p.m. that she could visit or go out and talk with people so I would be there at 7 and I would go in and sit and talk with the house mother," he says. "She may have something to do that she couldn't get out of and I would get back on the bus at 8:30 and go back to North Little Rock, without even seeing her sometimes."
Bill was working as a stock boy at Blass Department Store and going to school, first at Draughon School of Business and then at Little Rock Junior College (now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock). When Evelyn reached her senior year of nursing school and had weekends off, he proposed.
"Well, this was extremely risky because you could be kicked out of nursing school if you were married," Evelyn says.
They took a chance, though, exchanging their vows on Jan. 11, 1952, in the home of a justice of the peace in Benton. Their families knew they were married, but the only other person they told was Evelyn's roommate and the landlady of the room they rented so they could be together on her nights off.
Evelyn and Bill have one daughter, Sherri Barnard of Hot Springs Village. They also have two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Bill retired as purchasing director of the Pulaski County Special School District. Evelyn retired as a nursing supervisor from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
"We just feel blessed that we've been given this opportunity to be together this long," Evelyn says. "We've just been absolutely blessed."
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High Profile on 05/27/2018