U.S. 65 was meant to connect the South with the Midwest. But one little section of it, right between Greenbrier and Guy, proved to be the ultimate destination for Avanelle Morgan and J.C. Merritt.
There wasn't much for people to do on Sunday afternoons in the fall of 1939. The Great Depression was on and not many people had cars -- and there weren't many places to go around the area even if they had cars.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: “He was a little older than me and a little more grown up and I just kind of fell for him.”
He says: “She was not an out-front, forward person. All the other girls were making noise and laughing and this and that and the other, and she was very reserved. It was her smile and all that, and she had on beautiful, nice-fitting clothes and that caught my attention.”
When we got married I wore:
She says: “A lace dress — not a long one, just an ordinary one that my mother was able to find and afford.”
He says: “I had one suit — I think I wore my one brown suit that day.”
My advice for a lasting marriage:
She says: “Be totally committed. Always be faithful.”
He says: “Think ‘we’ instead of ‘I.’ And most of all, the bottom line, always consider the other person and respect them.”
But the government was building a highway through Faulkner County and folks from Guy and Greenbrier decided to stroll a mile or two up their gravel roads to see it.
Avanelle, then 13, was with a group of girls, but she was hanging back slightly rather than giggling and chatting with them when J.C., 17, first saw her. She was wearing a pretty green satin blouse that her mother had sewn for her out of one of her own blouses.
"That made her stand out to me," he says. "I couldn't get her attention. We were sitting down on an old highway road, and I finally just picked up a piece of gravel and flipped it until I got her attention. I just flipped it like you would a marble."
Avanelle had already noticed him, she concedes.
"I had to make him work at it," she says.
Avanelle and J.C. only lived a couple of miles apart, but they went to different schools and traveled in different circles.
"It was just a leisurely afternoon," says J.C. "I guess we talked about how we went to different schools and about what activities they had and about basketball, and that was just our way of communicating, one community to another."
J.C. and Avanelle arranged to meet at all-day gospel singalongs, picnics and any other community or school event they could manage to attend.
"After we got acquainted I would walk to her place -- uphill all the way -- on a gravel road," J.C. says.
He graduated from high school and left for what is now Arkansas Tech University in Russellville but was only there one semester before Pearl Harbor was bombed. He dropped out to work while waiting to be called to serve in the military.
"With the war, not many were coming back. We decided if we only had five months together and that was all the time we would ever have, we would just go ahead and get married," he says.
J.C. was working in construction in nearby towns, and he returned home to Greenbrier on July 4, 1942, so they could marry. The courthouse was closed, he discovered, so they couldn't get their marriage license.
Avanelle spent a couple of days with his family while they waited for the courthouse to open that following Monday, July 6, 1942. He and Avanelle rode with two friends to Conway, got their license and exchanged vows in the home of a Baptist minister. Then Avanelle went with J.C. back to Pine Bluff, where he was working.
"We had to tell a story about our ages, you know," he says. "You had to be older to get married. We paid the pastor $5 to marry us."
J.C. served 38 months in the Army, and Avanelle was with him for most of that time.
He was driving down a highway in Bowling Green, Ky., one night while stationed at Fort Knox with Avanelle sleeping in the backseat. He pulled over and got out to read a road map in front of the headlights, and as he stood there a big truck hit the back of the car, pushing it -- and him -- 44 feet.
She was bruised but not seriously hurt. He spent 10 months in the hospital recovering from his injuries.
"We didn't have any money to speak of," Avanelle says. "He was laid up in the bed unconscious and beat up. I just used his sleeping bag and slept under his bed until we got shipped on up to his station."
When he was discharged, he went back to college and studied vocational agriculture education and public school administration. He taught in schools in White and Faulkner counties and then went to work with the Arkansas Highway Department.
In 1982, he and Avanelle moved back to Greenbrier and now live about three-quarters of a mile from where they first met.
The Merritts have three children -- Janelle Merritt of Greenbrier, Keith Merritt of Hot Springs and Rodney Merritt of Ellenton, Fla. They have seven grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
They will celebrate their 75th anniversary from 2 to 4 p.m. today at Springhill Baptist Church, 25 Arkansas 287 E. Friends are welcome to attend.
They once feared they would only have five months together.
"Of course, as you know the Lord has given us 75 years," J.C. says. "When I asked her about getting married, she wanted to know if I would still love her when she got old. I made that promise. We have enjoyed life together."
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High Profile on 07/09/2017