Teri Sue Wyatt and her folks were part of the Lay Witness Mission (LWM) team that came to First UMC of Enid, OK in 1971. I was active in the church as a matter of habit but leery of the LWM. Teri Sue and I didn’t meet but her folks told her there was a guy there like the kind of guy she should marry and pointed me out. I was not smiling at the time, which gives me a mean look, and she was not impressed.
We actually met at another LWM, this one in Amarillo TX. No sparks, just a nice chat; but I did notice she was pretty cute with a huge smile.
By this time I was actively participating in LWMs and took some leave to fly to Anchorage AK in the Spring of 1972 to attend consecutive weekend LWMs at Turnagain UMC and Anchor Park UMC. Imagine my surprise to learn that a certain Teri Sue Wyatt from Borger TX was one of the team members! She had come with a friend, Diana Stanley, who had lost her husband and father in a small plane crash. Teri Sue thought I would be an ideal companion for Diana, so every time I asked Teri Sue out, she asked if Diana could go with us. Mid-week the team took the train to Fairbanks and back, and during the trip Teri Sue noticed that every time we took a walk on the train, everyone would shift seats to make sure we could sit together when we got back. Light began to dawn!
During the teasing phase of our developing relationship, we often referred to the “thread of friendship” as wearing thin if the teasing got too personal or something. At the end of both LWMs we celebrated communion together and I promised I’d see her again. She’d heard that before at numerous summer camps, so wasn’t too convinced.
After meeting in Anchorage AK, the 235 miles between Enid OK and Borger TX wasn’t such a long way, especially driving a red 1972 Datsun 240Z, so I called her and told her I was coming to visit. I arrived with a small gift: a section of steel cable suggesting the “thread of friendship” would never break. She thought that was pretty cool, since she’d been looking for a ship hawser to suggest the same thing, but there aren’t many ships in the Texas Panhandle. This first visit is when her father, “Daddy Bill” Wyatt, commented I wasn’t as short and fat as she’d said I was.
We got engaged on my third visit to Borger in the summer of 1972. It wasn’t a formal marriage proposal; we were parked in their carport having just arrived home from a drive-in movie (don’t remember the movie…) and I told her I couldn’t live without her. We moved into the kitchen and Donna Lee came up and asked what we were talking about and I replied, “We’re deciding which of us is going to tell you we’re getting married.” Donna Lee said okay and walked back down the hallway to the master bedroom, then came back out and asked, “Are you kidding?” We were going to wait until the following summer to get married but Teri Sue just couldn’t wait (!) so we moved the wedding to October 7,1972, at the First United Methodist Church of Borger, TX. And we’ve been married ever since.
Opening gifts after the wedding, Teri Sue presented me with the steel cable, mounted and framed, and it has been hung over our bedroom door ever since, signifying whatever the issue or disagreement is, the thread of friendship will never break. Even knowing that promise, though, I could still never bring myself to get into an argument with her. I’d either give in, or not talk about it right then, and ask for forgiveness later.
During the wedding, our flower girl dropped flower petals as she came down the aisle until the 2-year old ring bearer noticed and started picking up the petals and putting them back in the flower girl’s basket. Teri Sue was in the bridal room in the back of the sanctuary and wondered why everyone was laughing during the processional. The ceremony was wonderful; unfortunately, Daddy Bill, who normally ran the church sound system including recordings, was tied up with the wedding party so the task fell to someone else – and the audio recording is terrible. We persevered through the reception and left the church – Teri Sue in a pink hand-crocheted pant suit and me in a fashionable double-knit sport coat and slacks with two-tone platform shoes.
Because I was a sponsor, the Youth Group from the First United Methodist Church of Enid OK attended the ceremony with the youth leader (and my best man) Fletcher Ownbey. The boys threatened to follow us as we left on our honeymoon so Fletch and I worked out an escape plan: we got in his car and he drove across the church lawn through a couple of parking spaces and sped on a tortuous route to get to our 240Z parked in a private garage, and we left from there with no followers. Somehow we got so excited during our escape we made a wrong turn and ended up in Kansas instead of Colorado so we spent our wedding night in some nondescript motel in Kansas and the next day went on to Estes Park CO for the rest of our honeymoon.
Our family has been blessed with two amazing sons, Wyatt and Kevin. They are unique, loving, thoughtful, trustworthy, and generous. Like all of us, they have faced uncertainty, unemployment, heartache, and their own issues, but have persevered in being good men and we are very proud of them. Best of all, they love their children, our grandchildren, and we are most thankful for that.
We like to think we brought them up to be that way, but in truth we just did our best with what we thought to be true and right at the time, and they turned out great mostly because of their own efforts and personalities. Thanks, guys!