Nancy Henson's voice wasn't loud enough to win her a part in the senior play, but she did win the lead role in J.M. Harbert's life.
Nancy saw J.M. in the hallway at Lake Hamilton High School right after she moved from Texas to Hot Springs in the middle of her senior year in 1966.
The first time I saw my future spouse
She says: “I saw him in the hall. He was in trouble with the principal.”
He says: “When I came out into the hallway there was this new girl and she had black hair and blue eyes, and I just thought, ‘Wow.’”
On our wedding day:
She says: “After we got married we were supposed to go out one door, just the little wedding party, and back into another door for the reception. We ran out the door and it was raining and the other door that we were supposed to go into was locked. There we stood in the rain.”
He says: “We were locked out and we got drenching wet and we had to go to the reception at her mother’s house afterward.”
My advice for a long happy marriage:
She says: “Have a deep abiding love — and humor. And I would say trust in the Lord.”
He says: “I have to go along with that. To stay happily married for a long time you’ve got to be giving. There has to be trust between the two of you.”
He remembers seeing her then because she was new in their little country school -- and because she was pretty. She was wearing a dress that had a tie with fuzzy balls on the front, he says.
"And it knocked off about three inches above the knees," says J.M., also a senior. "I went back to the study hall and I said, 'Hey, we've got this new girl in school and we need to check her out.'"
Nancy remembers seeing him on the basketball court, too.
"When we were in high school, he was a star basketball player -- that caught my eye right off," Nancy says. "I thought he was tall and handsome and a great basketball player."
But it wasn't until rehearsals started for the senior play that they got to know each other. Nancy was up for a lead part in the play, but the part went to someone else.
"It ended up I did not because I couldn't talk loud enough," she says. "I was very shy at the time. I was so embarrassed -- I was a new kid there and everything."
Her role, instead, was to stand behind the curtains and give prompts to the students who forgot their lines.
J.M., who did have a part in the play, asked Nancy for a Coke date after one of the practices.
The senior trip happened not long after that and they talked for hours on the bus ride to Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington, Texas, and back.
"We started going together on that trip," Nancy says.
Once they were back home, they started going to the lake together almost every day.
One of their teachers invited the graduating seniors -- all 58 of them -- to his place on Lake Ouachita for a swimming party.
"She learned to water ski there," J.M. says. "She got interested and I talked her into it and she learned to water ski."
J.M. moved to Little Rock in mid-June to attend then-Little Rock University (now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock). He was back home regularly, though, to see Nancy, who was going to cosmetology school.
"He would come and help my family haul hay on the ranch," Nancy says. "And our friends had a boat so we still went to the lake every weekend when it was warm."
J.M. worked in a bookstore in downtown Little Rock, which happened to be just a few doors down from a jewelry store. That jewelry store prompted him to propose in August 1966, just three months after he and Nancy started going together.
"I saw these rings in there and I thought, 'Boy, that would be nice,'" J.M. says. "I asked her when she came over to Little Rock one time to go with me and we looked at those rings and I asked for her dad's permission and that's how that all happened."
J.M. had been at LRU for 15 months when then realized his draft number was coming up. He joined the Air Force.
They were married April 19, 1968, in Second Baptist Church of Hot Springs.
"J.M. called three days before, after basic training was over, and said, 'I'm coming home! Let's get married!'" Nancy says. "So I had three days to scurry around and we had a very simple wedding. I made my dress with the help of my mom and by-golly we got married and we had a nine-day honeymoon at Petit Jean and then he left for his first assignment in California and came back and got me after a month and we moved out there."
From California, they moved to Omaha, Neb., then Shreveport, then Colorado Springs, Colo. J.M. did a 15-month stint in Australia while Nancy stayed behind in Colorado Springs.
When he left the Air Force after 20 years of service, he went to work for Lockheed. He retired in 2004. He and Nancy live in Hot Springs now, on Lake Hamilton.
J.M. and Nancy have two sons -- Dutch Harbert of Owasso, Okla., and Chad Harbert of Hot Springs. They also have four grandchildren -- Ash, Willow, Oakley and Aspen Jane.
"Our class was so little and it was full of people that we're still friends with," Nancy says. "Today we get together with our friends from high school and play games and eat like 12-year-olds. We have potlucks and play games."
The Harberts enjoy lake life, taking guests out on their pontoon boat and sharing fried fish caught by friends.
"She actually can still ski and I can't," he says. "When we left Colorado we left friends there, and we came here and it was like we never left. We had all of our friends from high school and we just kind of picked up where we left in high school."
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High Profile on 04/15/2018