By the time I had worked at Duke University Hospital a year, in March '52, I was ready for a new challenge. I was enjoying my church work and my frtiends there more than the hospital staff. I was still president of the Relief Society and also teaching all the young women in the small branch, four of them who came regularly. A fifth, the oldest child of Dr. Reuben Hill came from Chapel Hill with her father's graduate student, Joel Moss and his wife. Joel got his doctorate in Family Science and taught at BYU where we see him often. Rueben was a pioneer in the field, and had written the college text, The Family, which we had used in college.
An announcement of a distrrict church activity to be held always brought my four regulars begging to be taken to the affair. This was a Saturday afternoon workshop to be followed by a formal dance in the evening. The venue was a beautiful new chapel about two hours away near Greensboro. I was not confident enough of my driving to do it, but they recruited a senior boy more than willing. I actually looked forward to the day because I had seen a tall, dark, handsome fellow from Colorado who had just come to Greensboro to teach in a college there. My best friend from church, Pat Dowdy, a student at Duke, had met him and was unimpressed.. He had unusually long hair on top which he would fling around when he played the piano. Pat called the virturoso The Hair, but I was not interested in anyone else, and I was interested in his new light blue convertable.
His name was Stan Kimball, and I thought he was very handsome. We talked for quite a while when a soldier from Fort Bragg brought over a friend to introduce to me. He quickly asked me if I were . interested in the dance workshop. Stan had other plans, so Ted and I joined the dance workshop, at the end of which Ted asked me if I would accompany him to the formal dance in the evening. Wanting to reconnect with Stan, I told him I would see him there, because I had borrowed formals from all my friends for my teens to wear to their first formal dance, and anticipated quite a trial getting them sorted out, pinned together and settled in a place most likely to attract a partner. Stan saw me first and we had started the first dance when Ted and his buddies arrived. A whirl or two around the floor and Ted cut in. Stan was waitng when that dance was over, bur we had barely got into the second one when Ted cut in again, Stan only tried to dance with me one more time and gave up. I couldn't believe it, such rudeness! Still he was cute, and at intermission Stan performed on the piano. I decided he was not so cute. Before the evening was over Ted had my address and asked if he could write to me. What a snow job. It was almost funny. As he walked me to my car where Harold Glasgow had the four girls fighting over who would sit in the middle in front, he told me he intended to marry me. I ended the arguement by sitting in the middle in front myself, and the girls didn't like it a bit.
Fast forward twenty years. Stan married a girl from NC, Violet Tew. He became a history professor like Ted. His mom tried hard to get him hired at BYU, but Ted was chairman of the dept. and still competetive. His mom, Vontella, was a very striking woman, dark and stately. She had impressed President Ernest Wilkinson, and after offering to work free, he brought her on board as a public relations expert. She had actually been visiting Stan and was present at the dance the night I met Ted..
The second year we were here at BYU I was president of the newcomers, a group I was helping to orient to the campus social life. I called Vontella, reminded her that we had met in Greensboro, back in '52, and asked her to speak to the group after our dinner. She began by telling them how we had met..." my son was dancing with her at a ball when she was a debutante in North Carolina!" I nearly choked thinking about my "coming out". I guess my only coming out was from the tobacco field. The best kind of coming out!!
I was not looking very hard. I had moved ten miles north of Durham to Mangum to teach in the high school, but i was still going in to Durham to work in the hospital on weekends. I was Relief Society president in my church, as well as teaching all the young women every week.
My four girls desperately wanted to go to a district festival in Winston Salem, so I broke my ties with the hospital and took them. They had never been to a formal dance before. I found formals of mine and from my old roommates and we drove the two hours Saturday morning. There were dance classes in the afternoon and other fun activities.
In the dance class I saw a guy all the girls my age had been talking about, Stan Kimball. He was a new arrival in the district, teaching at a college in Charlotte. He was tall, dark and handsome, and he came over to me and introduced himself. He said he would see me at the dance that night and left. Then Bob Leonard, a soldier I had met earlier, brought over a tall skinny fellow named Ted Warner, and introduced him. Ted asked me to join him in the dance class. He was well dressed, not at all like a soldier. His clothes, a gray wool slacks and navy cashmere sweater looked new and his shoes were expensive black, not the GI brown; I was impressed. As we danced he asked me to be his partner at the dance that night. I had been hoping to dance with Stan.
I told him about the teenagers I had to get dressed up and said I would see him there.
Vontella Kimball had just been appointed assistant to President Wilkinson, his social assistant. Someone said he had only met her once, and was so impressed by her he took her up on her offer to work for a dollar a year. I thought what a perfect speaker to have for the fall social. When I introduced her I told about meeting her in NC, and she began her remarks she confirmed that she had met me there when she went to visit her son, Stan, and that I was a debutante!
Well, let's see, when was it I "came out"? Must have been 1950 when I "came out" of the tobacco field!!
Vontella was only here a year. Several years later when Ted was chairman of the history department, she dropped in to tell him Stan was professor of history and was very interested in teaching at BYU. Stan married Violet Tew from NC and they lived in Illinois. He did teach one summer at BYU and we gave a party for them.
In a few days after we met I got a letter telling me he had obtained a weekend pass and wanted to come to see me. The letter had a heavy object pinned inside, his paratrooper wings. I thought they were the ones he had presented to him when he finished training, but discovered he had sent them to his mom and hurridley bought a pair for me at the PX.
In those days girls wore their boyfriend's frat pins. He had been a Bricker at BYU, and soon his mom sent his pin so I could wear it on my sweaters.
In two weeks it was Halloween. He would come on Friday afternoon and go back Monday. It became a very interesting weekend, which I will detail in my next blog. When he went back Monday we were engaged to be married!
