Lobo Sweethearts cont...page 5

Larry Thompson '68
Ann Phillips Thompson '65

I had just come out of the Army in January of 1966, and my friend with whom I had attended junior college, Jeff Henderson (also a Sul Ross Graduate student), helped arranged a Teaching Assistantship for me to work on a Master’s degree at Sul Ross.
 

Part of my job was to supervise the publication of the student newspaper and write press releases for Don Newbury. I entered Newbury’s office one day to ask about a task he had assigned me, and I saw a young lady at the secretary’s desk that I had never seen before. I said to myself, “Whoa. Who I this lovely creature?”  Newbury must have seen me looking at her. He stopped me and said, “I’ve already lost two secretaries because they got married and moved away. “ He pointed his finger at me and said, “If you date her, I’ll fire you.” At that time I needed a job more than I needed a date, so I looked the other way and forgot about dating his secretary. I didn’t know it at the time, but she would see me in the hallways between classes and would follow me around without my knowing it.

She graduated that year and went off to New Mexico to teach near Silver City. The Fall Semester of 1966 arrived, and with it came October and Homecoming. Jeff Henderson and his wife, Sharon Heath, were going to Homecoming activities, and asked me if I was going. I told them I didn’t think I would. I would just spend time studying for my classes. 

I cleared my throat. I said, “Well . . . um . . . maybe I’ll study later. Yeah. Sure. I’ll try it.”

I was working at an extra job the evening she came to town. Three of the cheerleaders who had been her classmates, among them Jenneane Gladson and Gay Howell, brought her by the place of business. I was standing behind the counter when about five coeds entered the store, and I looked up. I could not pick her out of the crowd, but at the instant they entered something in the back of my mind, I don’t know where it came from, said to me, “Thompson, this is it. She is the one.”  She stepped out of the crowd, and oh, my Lord. I knew, like I knew, that I knew. This one was a keeper.  We chatted for a few minutes, and I told her of the plans made to go to the game and then to go dancing that night at a local club. She said the plan was good and she would be ready for me to pick her up at the appointed time. She left, and I sort of lost my focus the rest of the afternoon. I don’t remember much about it.

I cleaned up and drove to pick her up. We had a meal together, and we talked. I told her things about myself and my goals that I had never shared with anyone else. She was so easy to talk to.

We finished the meal, and I was driving us to the club where we would meet Jeff and Sharon. As we were driving I told her about the club and the dancing. She said, “Really? I don’t dance.”

I nearly wrecked the car by stopping immediately and pulling off the road. I asked, “What did you say? You don’t dance?” With an empty feeling in my stomach, I could see my whole romance slipping away. After all, who at Sul Ross didn’t dance, I mean at least the “Cotton Eyed Joe.”

She smiled sweetly, and said, “Yes, I do dance. I was just teasing you.”

Oh, man. She had looks, brains (she was a math teacher), she had a personality, and she could dance.

We danced that night to every dance, and we talked, and we talked, and we talked.

The next morning, she had to return to Silver City. We talked some more. I got her telephone number, and I saw her off. I calculated the time it took her to reach Silver City safely, and then I phoned her. When she answered the phone, she seemed very pleased to hear from me, and we chatted for a few minutes.

When we hung up, she told me later, she turned to her roommate, Marsha Logsdon, also a Sul Ross graduate, and she said, “I’m going to marry that man.”

We visited on the phone frequently. She came back to Alpine two weekends after Homecoming to visit. I had already made up my mind about her. She was the “dream lover” I had wanted that Bobby Daren sang about. I told her that I loved her more than anyone else in the world, and I asked her to marry me. She said she would, and 41 years later the rest is history.

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