Horace Springer and his teammates ate meals early so they could watch the young women at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia arrive to eat theirs.
Joy Charles stuck out in the crowd.
"I was too shy to say anything to her," he says.
He had seen her elsewhere on campus.
"I was a little interested in her. Most of the girls were studious but this lady was working on campus. She did work-study and she had this pattern and that's how I figured out that it might be interesting to find out who she was," he says.
Joy had noticed Horace, too, nicely dressed in pressed pants and a corduroy jacket as he made his way around campus each day.
Joy had been there since 1974, when she graduated a year early from high school in her hometown, Stephens, and she was preparing to finish her bachelor's degree in 1977.
Horace, then a sophomore, didn't realize at the time that they were the same age.
"She was getting ready to graduate and I wasn't fast enough to keep up with an upperclassman," he says.
"One of her friends who was from North Little Rock set up a date for us," says Horace, who had asked for an introduction. "She was dating one of my roommates."
They went on a double-date, to a drive-in for burgers and fries.
"Once we met and started talking it was kind of something that, you just get a feeling about certain people," Horace says. "That was kind of how it was with us. It just felt right."
Joy was writing a marketing paper about how to increase awareness about the Reader Railroad, a tourist attraction train that ran through Nevada and Ouachita counties. She was planning a road trip to talk with people in Chidester, Camden and Prescott as research for her paper. Horace asked if he could go with her.
"We had that opportunity to take a ride together. That was the opportunity for us to spend the day together," he says. "She was walking around a shopping center area talking to people, and I was just watching her, and along the way we talked about a lot of things."
Both, they learned, were raised in A.M.E. churches, and there were even some connections between their families.
Their dates after that road trip took place mostly in Arkadelphia.
"We couldn't have gone too far," Horace says. "We had a movie theater in Arkadelphia and there wasn't much you could do."
Joy graduated from HSU in 1977 with a bachelor's degree in business administration, and she moved to Little Rock to find a job, determined to establish her career before getting married. She started her career in the credit office at M.M. Cohn, and then became an accounting clerk in the company's business office.
"We were still seeing each other because he followed me back up here," Joy says.
"I came home," Horace clarifies. "I came back to Little Rock and I started taking some classes at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. I started working for different people and then I started for AFCO Steel."
Horace, who got to know Joy's relatives during their annual family reunions, asked permission from Joy's father to propose marriage.
They were wed on May 27, 1983, in a ceremony officiated by Horace's uncle.
"My Uncle Will married us in my sister Ada Hollingsworth's home," he says.
There was a delayed wedding reception at Trapnall Hall.
The Springers were married on Memorial Day weekend, and they had a room for their wedding night at the Excelsior Hotel.
"We invited everyone up to watch the fireworks," Joy says. "We had a roomful of people."
A couple of years after that, they flew to Hawaii, thrilled to be bumped up to first class on a flight with the Razorbacks football team.
Joy got another degree, in elementary education, followed by a master's degree in education administration.
Around 1990, Joy went to work for lawyer John Walker as an education monitor, visiting schools to see how desegregation plans were put in place. She was first elected Arkansas State Representative of District 76 in 2020.
Horace says the determination that led Joy to take advanced classes and to graduate one year early from high school, and to excel in college classes inspired him to move forward in his own career as well.
"I think that was one of the reasons I was attracted to her," he says. "She was an excellent person to watch and observe and admire and to try to live up to the same type of standards she had."
Horace and Joy say they are different, yet the same.
"I think that our talents are different but we're alike in a lot of ways," he says. "We both grew up in A.M.E.s and we learned how to love God and to love others, but to give back. But Joy takes it to another level."
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NoneThe first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: "I thought he was kind of cute. I liked his hair. He had a nice afro."
He says: "I knew that she might be the one."
On our wedding day:
She says: "I was hoping that he would be on time. He was a little bit late."
He says: "We're both kind of workaholics. I went to work that morning and we got married that afternoon."
My advice for a long happy marriage:
She says: "Don't stay mad for more than about 48 hours."
He says: "When you go home take something with you for your spouse, because you want them to know you're thinking about them."
Horace Springer and Joy Charles were married on May 27, 1983, in his sister’s home. “We didn’t have a big fancy wedding,” Horace says. “We just got married simply at a place that my family used to gather all the time out there in University Park.” They had a delayed reception at Trapnall Hall. (Special to the Democrat-Gazette)