As the Cuban Missile Crisis heated up in 1962, Phyllis Akin was a contestant for the title of Miss Flame.
A group of firefighters in Little Rock was sponsoring the Miss Flame contest, which was to be held at Robinson Auditorium. Personnel stationed at the Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville -- perhaps the most enthusiastic subset of the expected audience -- were ordered to stay on base so they would be ready to fly out at a moment's notice. Since that meant the guys wouldn't be able to attend the competition, the firefighters opted to take the competition to them.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
He says: “I thought she was cute.”
She says: “I thought he was very nice-looking and that he was very polite.”
My advice for a long, happy marriage is:
He says: “You have to keep it interesting from time to time.”
She says: “Be friends and have open communication. Don’t hold something in, talk about it.”
On our wedding day:
He says: “I was really nervous. Part of it was the Catholic-Protestant thing. We were married in a Catholic church and my mother and father and my brothers and sisters and I were the only Catholics in the church, except for the priest, and he was even nervous.”
She says: “I was scared to death.”
"I didn't win or even come close," says Phyllis of her stroll down the runway.
Winning, however, is a matter of perspective. After the pageant there was a dance, and that's where she met Airman Ray Oblinger, which was a big, big win in the grand scheme of things.
Ray's roommate was dating a girl Phyllis knew. That was their introduction. Sharing several dances that night laid the groundwork for future meetings.
Phyllis hoped to see Ray again, and told a friend about him the next day, though she had a hard time recalling his unusual last name.
It would be a while yet before she heard it again.
Phyllis was 18, a senior at Central High School. Ray, who was 20, certainly thought she was pretty hot but also thought she was at least a couple of years younger than that, and a little too young for him.
"I think it was the red dress she had on that made her look so young," Ray says.
The dress was simple --wool with a fitted bodice, a flared skirt and long sleeves.
"I remember there was another girl in the contest who had on one just like it," she says.
Ray convinced his roommate to find out from his girlfriend how old Phyllis was, and though it took a while, his roommate dutifully reported back that she was, indeed, 18, not 16, as he assumed.
Still, Ray was confined to the base for a while longer so he couldn't take her on a date. And as the crisis escalated it became harder to get visitors through security to visit on base, so he couldn't have invited her there either.
"It was a strategic air command military base and they were shutting down because they had all the bombers and planes and they didn't want to risk having a lot of people there," Ray says.
It was late November by the time he finally called Phyllis to ask her out. Their first date was on Thanksgiving Day.
"He had to come in and meet my whole family, including relatives that were there on Thanksgiving Day," she says.
"That's what I got for waiting so long," he jokes.
He and Phyllis toured a chinchilla farm near Ferndale that day, then had dinner and saw West Side Story. That was the start of a nearly two-year courtship that ended with ... a breakup.
Ray was Catholic and Phyllis was Baptist. They had reached a point in their relationship where both felt they needed to commit to marriage or part ways, and "neither of us thought we were ready for marriage," Ray says.
Plus, Phyllis was acutely aware of Ray's plan to move back to Detroit, his hometown, when he was discharged from the military. "I had never been out of Arkansas," she says.
Their breakup happened in March 1964, but they failed to achieve escape velocity. They got engaged and exchanged wedding vows on July 11, 1964, at St. Edward Catholic Church in downtown Little Rock.
Ray got out of the Air Force the following February and he went to work as a computer programmer with Systematics, later promoted to vice president/regional manager. His career in technology took him and his family all over the United States and led to a four-year stint in Europe.
The Oblingers now live in Sherwood. They have three children, Kimberly Stanley and Kathy Hale, both of North Little Rock, and Tracey Williams of Chicago. They also have nine grandchildren.
They can't remember how they celebrated their first anniversary, but in years past Ray has been big on surprising Phyllis with trips to commemorate their time together. Their daughters hosted a party for them in honor of their 50th anniversary. They have a cruise planned for the fall.
"She's followed me all around the world," Ray says of Phyllis. "She's a real trooper. We've had some good times."
He didn't ask to be introduced to her the night of the Miss Flame pageant.
"I think," he says, "I was just very much in the right spot."
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High Profile on 07/13/2014