One good turn deserves another. Betty Frederich arranged for her friend to go out with her boyfriend's buddy -- a double date! -- and after Betty and her boyfriend broke up, that boyfriend's buddy found someone new for her to date -- Joe Franzetti.
In 1964, Betty was dating an airman who went to night school at Little Rock University (now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock).
The first time I saw my spouse:
She says: “I was impressed. I liked him immediately.”
He says: “I was struck by her beauty and her personality. I fell in love with her and her family.”
On our wedding day:
She says: “It was a wonderful day. In those days you got married in the morning and I think our wedding was at 9 o’clock at St. Edward and we had a reception at Trapnall Hall. After the reception we came back to my mom’s house and she made snacks and we watched the Razorbacks game before we left on our honeymoon.”
He says: “I just remember being giddy with my parents and sister before the wedding. It’s hard to describe.”
My advice for a long happy marriage is:
She says: “Take your vows seriously and go to church as often as you can.”
He says: “It’s not all good times but just stick it out and pray together, stay together and things will work out.”
"He said there was another young officer from the air base who was going to night school and taking some classes with him and he didn't know anybody, [so] he asked if I happened to know anyone who would go out with him," Betty says.
Betty fixed him up with a friend. When Betty and her boyfriend broke up not long after that, she asked her friend if there were any other nice Catholic guys at Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville she might go out with. And that's how she came to have a date with Joe.
Their first date -- another double with a girlfriend and an airman -- was on April 23, 1965, to Ice Capades at Barton Coliseum in Little Rock. "It turned out not to be not an icy date," Joe quips.
"I still have the program somewhere. I'm kind of a sentimentalist."
He didn't ask her out for another date before he took her home that night but he knew he wanted to see her again. He was a little apprehensive. "I didn't know what she thought," he says.
He called her the next day -- and they've talked just about every day since then.
Joe was in the 308th Strategic Missile Wing and was required to be on duty for 24 hours, sleeping at the missile site. Then he'd have three days off. It gave him time to drive to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers offices where Betty was working as an engineer's aide and pick her up for lunch.
"I took a lot of ribbing from the guys at work who called him Lt. Fuzz," she says, referring to the comical character from the Beetle Bailey cartoon.
In May, Betty went on her very first plane trip -- to visit her sister in Albuquerque, N.M.
"While we were out there Joe called me every night,'' she says.
Those calls weren't cheap, he says, but then, "she was worth it."
They don't agree on the date they became engaged.
"I guess it depends on how you count it. Joe keeps records of everything. He came across a notebook the other day where he had written down that we met on April 23rd and he proposed on May 27th and I actually got my ring on June 11," says Betty, who claims that indicates a June engagement.
Joe insists they were engaged in May.
Either way, they agree that it happened pretty fast.
Betty wanted to wait a while to marry. Joe did not.
"I just thought it was kind of soon, to get married that fast," she says. "But I didn't really object because I knew he was the person I wanted to marry."
They exchanged their vows on Nov. 20, 1965, in St. Edward Catholic Church in Little Rock.
"I would have been a little faster to get to the altar but I was on a missile crew that went out to Vandenberg" Air Force Base in Lompoc, Calif. "We were one of three crews selected to actually go out and launch a missile for a test program, and we were there for about six weeks before the wedding."
The Franzettis lived in Little Rock for about three more years before Joe was transferred to Vandenberg. Three years later he went to a couple of schools in Alabama and then to North Dakota. From there they went to Omaha, Neb., and then back to Little Rock.
They have four children: Tony Franzetti of Austin, Texas; Chris Franzetti and Jeff Franzetti, both of Little Rock, and Lisa Brothen of Tinley Park, Ill. They also have 14 grandchildren.
Some of their grandchildren accompanied them on a trip to the beach recently to celebrate their anniversary, and along the way they pointed out some of the places they stayed on their honeymoon. Their main destination was New Orleans, but they spent time in Biloxi, Miss., and Mobile, Ala.
"I had never been to Florida before -- I had hardly been out of Arkansas before we got married -- so when we left Biloxi that night Joe said, 'Well, you've never been to Florida; you've got to see how pretty it is with the white sands down there,'" Betty remembers. "So we drove over to Pensacola and walked out on the beach so I could see it."
They've traveled since to almost every state in the country as well as to Europe and on several cruises. Joe goes every year to Honduras on a mission trip with their church, Christ the King Catholic Church.
There were other nice Catholic guys in the Air Force when Betty sent out her inquiry, and Joe isn't sure why he was the one his friend picked to go out with her.
"But he picked the right one," she says. "That's the important thing."
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High Profile on 07/26/2015