Thaddeus "Tad" Rygiel turned up when Barbara Barnes needed help turning on a light. A few repairs later, a switch flipped and she realized he was the answer to her prayers.
On a cold December day in 2020, Barbara discovered she couldn't lift the sturdy steel cap her late father had made for the concrete pump house on his property in Rose Bud so she could turn on the light inside that would keep it from freezing.
"It was heavy. The recent hurricanes could have danced on it and not budged it. I called my cousin and asked if she would send her honey, Brad, over to help me at my dad's house," says Barbara, who had been widowed 24 years earlier.
Brad brought Tad.
Tad, a widower, had worked in Alaska for 30 years before moving to Rose Bud. Barbara had seen him around town a few times but did not know him.
Brad and Tad got the heavy cover off, and after several trips to the store for supplies they rewired and repaired the light.
"The German chocolate cake was my specialty and I sent half to Brad and half to Tad as a thank you," she says. "Tad had tripped on a concrete block that was on the ground and he broke his wrist, but I didn't know that for a long time. Ever so often I would call him to see how he was doing and that's when he told me he had broken his wrist."
When Barbara discovered her mower wouldn't start, she asked if Tad would mind looking at it. A few weeks later, the weed trimmer stopped working and he returned to fix that. The dishwasher broke down and he was back again. Then he helped with replacing a filter in a new refrigerator at her house.
"He sort of became my unpaid handyman that I baked for," Barbara says.
Tad didn't mind.
"I didn't think anything about it," Tad says. "It was just somebody who needed something done and that's what I was doing. I would go over there and fix up whatever broke down."
Strawberry-picking season arrived, and Barbara planned a trip to a local berry patch.
"I always got some for my brother in Alabama and my sister in the Dallas area and for me, so I asked him if he wanted any," she says. "He said, 'Well, I'll just go with you.' I picked him up and we went over to Judsonia."
They talked as they picked.
"It was nice, having a companion to run places with like that," she says. "Then it was time for the blueberries and we got some of those and I got them all put up in the freezer, his and mine."
Barbara started calling Tad when she went into town to see if he needed her to pick up anything for him while she was there. And then it was time for purple hull peas. They picked five bushels of those, and spent a week sitting on Tad's front porch.
"I was so tired," she says. "I just chalked it up to thinking I had exercise I wasn't used to," she says. "I just couldn't get my strength back and I kept feeling worse and worse and worse. Come to find out, I had covid. Then I got hospitalized at White County hospital for three nights, and Tad called me every night."
She's a picky eater, she says, and while she was in the hospital he brought her takeout from a restaurant she likes.
"Of course he couldn't come to the room so the nurses brought it to me, but, oh, that was the best meal I had eaten in forever," Barbara says.
Barbara felt horrible and wasn't completely lucid, so she didn't fully comprehend when, during one of those calls, Tad told her he loved her.
He picked her up when she was discharged, though, and he took her home. He stayed to help care for her.
"He hasn't left yet," she says.
Her family doctor referred her to a cardiologist to be checked out as she recovered. When she was called back to the exam room she turned to give him a kiss and she told him she loved him.
"I could tell he didn't hear me," Barbara says. She told him again later, over lunch, and he repeated that he loved her, too.
Tad proposed a couple of months after that.
Barbara and Tad were married on Jan. 29, in the fellowship hall at Rose Bud Baptist Church.
"After I lost my husband all those years ago, I had said, 'Lord, if you want me to be with somebody, you're going to have to send them to me, because I'm not going looking,'" she says. "Nobody ever came."
That is, nobody until Tad, who she understands was the answer to her prayer.
"I realized, 'Lord, thank you for not having to start tearing things up at my house to get him to come over," she says. "I know you were thinking, you prayed and I sent somebody and you don't open your ears or your eyes. Here he is.'"
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NoneThe first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: “I thought he was really nice.”
He says: “It was at the pump house and I really didn’t think too much about it. She was just somebody who needed something done, so I did it.”
On our wedding day:
She says: “The preacher was asking us questions and I answered him before he got finished with his question.”
He says: “I said I do, and we went on our honeymoon.”
My advice for a long happy marriage:
She says: “Put him first. Take care of him and love him. And just be conscious of each other.”
He says: “We never go to bed angry with each other, and we can always say ‘I love you’; and we wake up every morning and say ‘I love you.’”