He lost the bet but won the heart of a pretty girl

“You know, I don’t think he ever did give me permission,” Pete Wells reflects, on asking Sissy Joiner’s father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. “But he never did say no, so I assumed that that was a yes.”

“You know, I don’t think he ever did give me permission,” Pete Wells reflects, on asking Sissy Joiner’s father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. “But he never did say no, so I assumed that that was a yes.”

Sunday, June 29, 2014

Pete Wells blindly picked Sissy Joiner's name from a string of others, then quickly bet his friend $1 that she would be uglier than the girl he'd got. Such was the cynicism that pervaded his lovelorn days, pre-Sissy.

Pete and his friend George were Sigma Nus at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and their fraternity was paired with Pi Phi sorority for social events. In September 1953, just after rush week, members from those houses could opt to be included in a date-matching process.

Pete signed up out of laziness, he says now.

"George and I didn't know of any girls to contact, and we didn't want to have to just go out and find someone to date," he says. "This was the easy way."

Easy and arsy-varsy. George and Pete were rightfully dubious about this matching system, hence the friendly wager.

"This doesn't really sound very nice, but we were 18 or 19," he says. "The way we phrased it was, 'Who will have the ugliest date?'"

And Pete bet that he would have the ugliest date.

He was a junior and Sissy a sophomore when they first went dancing at a local hangout. Each thought the other had footwork fancy enough to force encounters again. And again and again and again.

Pete invited Sissy home to Osceola to meet his family -- including his four younger brothers -- over Thanksgiving break.

"I don't think they had ever had a girl in their home," Sissy says. "Every time I looked up these little eyes were peering at me from over a chair or behind a door. And I remember rolling up my hair and this youngest brother just couldn't imagine what I had done to my hair, with those big rollers. His parents treated me like royalty. I guess they liked me OK."

Over Christmas break, he drove to her home in Helena and gave her an engagement ring, having already asked her father for her hand.

"You know, I don't think he ever did give me permission, but he never did say no, so I assumed that that was a yes," Pete says.

They were married on June 27, 1954, in First Presbyterian Church of Helena.

On the way up the stairs to the church, the heel of Sissy's shoe broke. She marched down the aisle in bare feet concealed by her long gown.

"My dad and I got so tickled about it we could hardly stop laughing when we started down the aisle," she says. "By the time the ceremony was over and we came back somebody had gotten the heel back on the shoe."

Their friends decorated a car with all manner of "Just Married" humor, unaware that that was not the vehicle they would drive away in.

"His dad had to drive the car back to Osceola that they had all painted up, with the four young boys in the backseat. They stopped for gas and the service station man said something like, 'What are you doing with this 'Just Married stuff'?' He said, 'Well, I've got all these boys. I thought it was time to get married.'"

Pete and Sissy had to get back to the university because he was enrolled in summer school, but they stopped overnight along the way.

"My brother ended up telling our friends from Fayetteville where we were staying that night and we got there and it wasn't long before they were all knocking on the door of the motel," she says.

Pete graduated with a degree in business administration and his career in sales took them to Austin, Texas; Oklahoma City; and Memphis. He retired in 1993 and they moved to Norfork, where he opened a cabinet shop. He retired for good in 2000.

Sissy didn't go back to school right away after they married, but she completed bachelor's and master's degrees in early childhood education at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock after raising their three children: Kelly Bomar of Little Rock, Vernon Wells of Botkinburg and Doug Wells of Lyman, Maine. She and Pete have four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Pete dropped out of school for a semester the spring after he and Sissy met, substituting for his mother, a teacher who had to be out of her classroom following an operation. Halfway through the semester he told his father he needed to borrow the car for a fishing trip with a buddy but instead drove straight to Fayetteville to see Sissy. His father didn't question the lack of fish but did comment on the extra miles that seemed to have accumulated on the car.

Pete fishes now from the banks of the White River near the home he shares with Sissy.

"I don't have to lie about going fishing anymore," he laughs.

He says he happily conceded the $1 he had bet immediately after their first date, and his friend did not argue.

"It was," he says, "the best dollar I ever lost."

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High Profile on 06/29/2014