Right Time Right Place

She saw stars, but not because of her head injury

Lisa Watkins got a nasty bump on her head. She'd hit the front brakes on her bike too hard and flown over the handlebars one Sunday in June 1975. Whew! Pain aside, though, that wreck might have been the best thing that ever happened to her.

A friend from her hometown of Warren was trying to recruit her to sing with the Uarkettes at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where she was planning to go the following fall. He had invited her to accompany him to Hot Springs to hear the group perform the day after her accident.

"I didn't feel very good and I didn't really feel like doing anything else so I was willing to ride the two hours to Hot Springs," she says.

This would be the second time she saw John Elkins, and it was forever memorable, in spite of her woozy head.

The Uarkettes had performed in the spring at her high school. She and the other high school choir students had served them a spaghetti dinner. Her hostessing duties afforded her the opportunity to get a better look at the cute guy she had seen throwing a football out by the bus.

She was pleasantly surprised to see this same guy stroll toward the table where she was sitting with her friend at the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs before the choir performance started.

"He had a red garment bag thrown over his shoulder," she says. "He lumbers up to the table, and he turns the chair around and sits down."

Her friend introduced her to John Elkins. John had just returned from visiting his brother in Phoenix.

"He was a really flirty guy, and a really handsome guy. This red bag was part of his whole look that day," she says.

During college registration that fall, she spotted John again.

"He said, 'Hey, Blue Eyes.' I was not going to let him know that I remembered his name and where he was from, so I said, 'Well, hey, Red Bag,'" Lisa says.

She auditioned for the Uarkettes a few days later, in front of the group's existing members -- including John -- who helped choose new members.

"He was sitting in between two girls, and he was grinning at me the whole time and nodding his head and acting like I was really something special," she says.

John remembers hearing Lisa sing Liza Minnelli's "Ring Them Bells" for her audition.

"I thought then, 'This is the one,'" he says. "She sang so beautifully and she was so cute and she had this Southern drawl."

John was on his way to Lisa's dorm, planning to ask her to get a soda with him, when he saw her standing in a crowd of other freshman girls.

"I've teased him over the years that he was really coming to ask somebody else, but I was absolutely not going to let that happen," Lisa says.

They went to Mr. Burger, and then sat for hours on a stone bench in front of Old Main.

"We could not have, in a movie, made this night any better," she says. "The moon was full, the air was cool ... it was perfect."

They talked about where they grew up and being the babies of their families, and their brothers.

"Then we started talking about our moms. My mom was a super, super woman," she says. "He started talking about his mom, and he was so proud of his mom. It was just a flash before me. I remembered my mom saying all of my growing up, when a man loves his mother he's going to love his wife."

In the months to follow, John showed Lisa around Fayetteville and they spent time together as part of the Uarkettes. He taught her the alma mater and he took her to her first ballgame.

The school year 1976-77 was less fun, with John in Little Rock for his first year of medical school and Lisa still going to classes in Fayetteville.

The next year, she transferred to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. They were walking from the medical school campus to the Little Rock Zoo when John dropped to his knee and asked her to marry him.

They were wed on May 13, 1978, by the pastor of Warren First Baptist Church, a man who, by sheer coincidence, was once a neighbor of John's in El Dorado.

After a residency in Dallas, John opened his obstetric/gynecology practice in Arkadelphia, where they still live.

They have two children -- John Elkins of Little Rock and Tizzie Stewart of Clinton -- and three grandchildren.

After 36 years of marriage, Lisa believes more than ever that she gained from her pain.

"It was just magical and meant to be," Lisa says. "And it really started from the bicycle wreck. If it hadn't been for the bicycle wreck I wouldn't have really met him."

If you have an interesting how-we-met story or know someone who does, please call (501) 378-3496 or email:

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High Profile on 05/18/2014

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