RIGHT TIME RIGHT PLACE: He doesn’t bring her (old) flowers anymore

— Le-Roy Gorrell started wooing the former Sally Williams in 1979 with leftover funeral flowers.

On their 25th wedding anniversary last year, he surprised her by chartering a plane to St. Louis, where a limousine took them downtown to a luxurious hotel suite furnished with champagne, chocolates and a dozen roses. They enjoyed a “magnificent” orchid show and dinner in a fine restaurant, where he presented her with a ring he made.

“He started with funeral flowers and got to this dozen roses,” Sally says. “It took a long time, but it was the most romantic thing that ever happened in my life.”

When they met in 1970, LeRoy was running a shop in Warrensburg, Mo., called the Family Cow, where he made turquoise jewelry, candles and “everything else youneed for your dorm room,” as he puts it. He had come to the Hand Maker in Eureka Springs, where Sally worked, to see how barn wood could be used. Though they appreciated each other’s love for art, the relationship remained strictly that of employee and customer.

Within two years, LeRoy moved to Eureka Springs, married and had a child. Sally’s then-boyfriend took her to meet LeRoy and his wife at their house. LeRoy played harmonica in a bluegrass band called Gaskin Switch. She was unimpressed.

“I remembered meeting him before, but I was thinking ‘Who wants turquoise rings and bluegrass music?’” Sally says. “I was into jazz and art ... I was so cool.”

By then, LeRoy was “part of the Eureka Springs scene,” Sally says.

“He had black hair that was in a big black afro,” she says. “He had a big black hat and a black truck and a black dog and a big Art Nouveau belt buckle. He’d put water in the hat to feed the dog.”

When Sally and LeRoy encountered each other again in 1979, LeRoy had gotten divorced, moved away to finish his mass communications degree and returned to Eureka Springs. He was selling ads for the Eureka Springs Times-Echo. Sally was an apprentice potter. This time she noticed him for sure, and not only for his white truck with rainbow stickers on the windows.

“I was dancing at the Quarter - a popular spot at the time - with a bunch of girls, and we were all in our full hippie attire,” Sally says. “Suddenly this guy came in wearing jeans and a houndstooth sport jacket. His afro was smaller ... I thought, ‘What is going on with this guy?’”

He ended up walking the women home. After that, he started coming around and leaving “funeral flowers” - broken pieces of funeral bouquets from a local florist - at Sally’s door.

After some false starts and stops, they married March 12, 1983. They were walking around town together when the notion struck them both.

“I told him, ‘If you asked me to marry you right now, I probably would,’” Sally says. “He slipped down on one knee right there and asked me.”

Sally, a part-time licensed counselor, is ever the artist, working with clay and learning to make jewelry. LeRoy is now a loan officer with Community Bank.

One of their hobbies is remodeling their home, which is filled with works from local artists. They get immense pleasure from planning the next improvement.

Like many artists, they’re never finished with their home or their plans.

If you have an intriguing how-we met story or know someone who does, please e-mail Cyd King at

[email protected]

Northwest Profile, Pages 39 on 12/20/2009

Upcoming Events