Plans change. Vena Martin's plans went from studying home economics to making a home with a husband, all in the span of a few months.
Vena intended to get a degree in home economics from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, and she was well on her way by early 1946. She had completed two summer sessions at the former Arkansas State Teachers College (now the University of Central Arkansas) in Conway right after high school and then taught for a year at a small country school to build up a little savings for her transfer to Fayetteville.
The first time I saw my future spouse
She says: “I thought he was cute. He had pretty hair.”
He says: “I thought she was nice-looking.”
On our wedding day
She says: “It was really hot. I was anxious to get it over with. It was just the two of us and our best friends.”
He says: “I was so nervous. I was a wreck.”
My advice for a long happy marriage is
She says: “Don’t put yourself first in everything.”
He says: “Well, you need to have a firm foundation. You should have similar backgrounds and similar interests and that sort of thing and there has to be a lot of give and take, also.”
But money was still tight and working to pay the bills was tough to balance with a full-time course load. When she got an offer for a government job back home that spring, she couldn't pass it up.
"I came home as soon as that session was out," she says.
Vena had grown up in Hiram, near Pangburn, but her parents had moved to Heber Springs while she was away at college. She moved back in with them and started work at the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. She planned to return to college when her financial situation improved.
"But then I met him," she says of her future husband, James Eason.
When she wasn't working, Vena often hung out at the town's drug store soda fountain with her friends.
She was there one afternoon, talking with a girl who had grown up with her in Hiram, when in walked a fellow who was back in town after serving in the Navy.
He strode over to talk with the husband of the girl who was chatting with Vena. She was fairly certain James' approach was a ruse.
"I think he was using that boy as an excuse to meet me," she says. "He won't admit it."
"We're not sure about that," James laughs. "But, anyway, it snowballed from there."
Neither of them recalls much of their first conversation, but Vena does remember turning down James when he asked her for a date.
"I knew he didn't have a car," she says. "He wanted to go to the late movie and I knew that would be too late for me to walk home after the movie."
James did not give up.
"You would have to know him," she says, in a salute to his tenacity. "I saw him out around town several times after that. He always appeared wherever I would be."
James, who got a job at a filling station, had a car within the next few weeks.
"He brought it and parked it right in front of my office," Vena recalls.
He marched inside and asked her again if she would go out with him.
She said she certainly would.
They went for a drive with some friends on their first date.
A few months later, he picked her up for another date and as she slid into the front seat she had to move a package out of her way.
"He guarded it a little bit," Vena says. "I just thought he had been out shopping and had a package of cigarettes or something in it."
She realized later that the package contained her engagement ring. James proposed that night.
They married on Aug. 17, 1946, in First Baptist Church of Heber Springs
James re-enlisted in the Navy about a year later. When he left, she was pregnant with their first daughter.
During his time in the Navy, the Easons were stationed in California, Illinois, South Carolina and Texas. They were living in Virginia Beach, Va., in 1967 when they got the opportunity to return to Arkansas.
A phone call in the middle of the night led to a job for James teaching electronics technicians at a new vocational-technical school in Searcy. James had been teaching in the Navy.
They moved to Searcy and James taught at Foothills Vocational Technical College -- now Arkansas State University-Searcy -- for 18 years before retiring.
The Easons have three children: Jamie Weagly of Chambersburg, Pa., Ed Eason of Conway and Ruth Hooper of Little Rock. They also have five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Vena didn't make it back to college after she married James, but she's certain she was drawn back home just so she could live the life she has lived.
"That was one of the reasons I came home -- see, the Lord meant for me to be there because that's where he was," she says, referring to James. "That's what it was all about."
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High Profile on 06/19/2016