Mary Gann fell for George Schroeder the instant she saw him across a crowded room.
Mary was a student at Baptist Memorial Hospital School of Nursing in Memphis and George was a pre-med student at Vanderbilt University in Nashville the first time she spotted him during a party at church.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: “I noticed how handsome he was. He’s still handsome.”
He says: “I was a typical 28-year-old fellow. I thought, ‘This is a cute little girl that has a pleasant smile.’”
On our wedding day:
She says: “My best friend growing up was maid of honor and his brother was his best man. We didn’t have much money so I didn’t have a white dress. I had a little blue suit with a little feathery, fluffy hat and I carried a white Bible with some flowers on it.”
He says: “We spent the night in north Memphis — we had what I would call a low-cost honeymoon because of our financial status at the time.”
My advice for a long happy marriage:
She says: “I have learned long ago that if you will make your spouse king, he’s looking for a queen and you’re there — you’ll be his queen. Keep Christ at the center of your home, have good music and communicate. A wife needs to reverence her husband and respect him and then she’ll find that he does that in return for her.”
He says: “We’ve heard preachers say that a wedding is both between two families and two people but it’s got to have three people in it — the other person is Jesus. That’s the basis and foundation for a happy and successful home life.”
"I looked across the crowded room and felt impressed that he was the one I was to marry," says Mary, who was at the party with her best friend, George's cousin.
He wasn't yet looking back at her, though.
For the next two years, she only saw him on occasional Sundays at church when he was home in Memphis for the weekend.
"We really didn't have any contact," Mary says. "He was dating somebody else, and I dated a bunch of duds along the way."
He finished his undergraduate degree and started classes at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Memphis, and they were both part of a small group of young people who often went out for pizza after church.
"Somewhere along the way it went to a group of two," George says. "That was my idea."
After that, George began picking up Mary at her dorm for dates.
"He didn't bring me flowers but he would stop by the Baptist student union and cut the flowers off their rosebush, and he would bring them to the house mothers," Mary says. "That was so he could be in good with them."
Nursing students had 9 p.m. curfews on weeknights and 10 p.m. on weekends, he explains.
"I thought in case we ever got there a little late, if the house mothers had been getting flowers, they might be a little lenient," he says. "I don't know if that's the truth because we never got there late. We often came running up the steps at the last minute, though."
He kissed her for the first time on those steps.
"When he took me back to the door, he took off running," she says.
He ran all the way to his parked car that night, gleeful after that kiss, in the same way Rolfe did in the Sound of Music after kissing Liesl in the gazebo.
Mary wondered why he ran off, but she asked for no explanation.
"She just pondered that in her heart," George says. "She's been doing that a long time, I think."
Three or four months after their first date, George asked Mary to marry him.
She said yes, and they went to Forrest City to ask for her parents' blessing.
"My daddy always said that Dr. Schroeder was the first boy I had ever dated that he felt like was good enough for me," Mary says. "He said, 'You always do what you can to meet George's needs and make him happy.'"
From there they went to George's father's office at the Southern Baptist Convention's Brotherhood Commission. He was working late, and the building was locked up, so they threw rocks at his window to get his attention.
"After a while, he showed up around the corner of the building ready to confront someone," George says.
After they gave him their happy news, they went to tell his mother, who was already in bed when they arrived.
"We just crawled up on the bed with her and asked her for her blessing," Mary says.
They exchanged their vows 11 months later, on Dec. 18, 1964, in the chapel of First Baptist Church in Memphis.
They honeymooned in a cabin in the Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park in Millington, Tenn.
"It snowed and we picked up sticks that we could take back to my mother and daddy for their fireplace. They didn't have a gas starter, so we gathered up kindling for them and wrapped it up in a big red blanket," says George. "We had picked up gumballs that had fallen off the trees, and I crumpled up aluminum foil around them and tied them up to our Christmas tree with little red ribbons because that didn't cost anything."
George was halfway through medical school when they married.
Following a two-year stint in public health service in Phoenix, they moved to Little Rock where he completed his residency. He's an ophthalmologist at Eye Care Arkansas. For 17 years they have lived in Bigelow, off the highway and through timber country.
They have four children -- Lori Harris of Maumelle, George Schroeder of Norman, Okla., John Schroeder of Hot Springs and Daniel Schroeder of Bigelow. They also have 14 grandchildren.
Mary didn't tell George about her first impression of him until long after he had noticed her back.
"It was probably after we were married that I heard this story," George says.
They will celebrate their 55th anniversary with a weekend stay in a bed and breakfast in Mountain Home near Blanchard Springs State Park.
Mary still enjoys gazing at George, especially since these days he's generally gazing back at her.
"We usually have a date night at least once a month," Mary says. "We go out to eat and just sit and have conversation and just enjoy being together."
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High Profile on 12/15/2019