She waited 4 decades to write their happy ending
Brenda Scisson was one of the first female sports reporters in the state in 1972.
She played competitive tennis while growing up in Crossett, and because tennis was the “it” sport when she graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, she quickly landed a job covering tennis for the former Arkansas Gazette.
One of her earliest assignments was to interview Larry Walton, a football coach-turned tennis pro who was overseeing the construction of the indoor tennis courts at North Little Rock’s Burns Park, one of the first such facilities in the state.
“I was smitten. Right then. There was chemistry,” says Brenda, who was 22.
She wrote the story about Larry, then 30, but their story was just beginning.
They ran into each other all the time as Brenda covered and played tennis and he coached players and organized tournaments.
“Our dating was unusual,” Larry says. “We didn’t have these dates to go out and eat dinner or go to a movie. We had these late dates because she was working at the paper, and I was doing tennis, and we were both working a lot and working late. I would pick her up and we would go to IHOP or something and that’s how we dated.”
They played competitive mixed doubles on the court, while courting.
“Larry was a single guy — a bachelor — and all of these women were chasing Larry. He had a lot of women who wanted to be his arm candy. And so he was dating quite a bit,” says Brenda, who dated other people, too, though not as many. “But there were just so many fun times we had, and I was just madly in love with him. I really, really was.”
In 1977, though, Larry met another woman at a wedding in Memphis and began dating her exclusively.
Brenda, crushed, stopped playing tennis at Burns Park and avoided Larry as much as possible.
Larry and his new love moved away a couple of years after they married in 1978, first to Shreveport, and then to Palmetto, Fla., where Larry taught high school and where they raised their two daughters, Lauren and Christen.
For the next 35 years, Brenda only heard about Larry in passing. She knew that his wife had been battling cancer, and after she learned that his wife had passed away she decided to call him.
“After a while she said, ‘I need to tell you something.’ Now, to my mind, I thought she was going to tell me that her husband wasn’t very happy that we were talking all the time,” Larry says. “That’s what I envisioned. So I said, ‘OK,’ and I was kind of waiting for the worst of things, that we weren’t going to be able to talk anymore. And she said, ‘You know, you were my first love. I still love you, I never forgot you, and I never got married.’”
Larry flew to Little Rock to visit Brenda, and she was waiting for him when he got off the plane.
“When I saw the look on her face I thought, ‘This woman, she still loves me,’” he says, his voice breaking. “It didn’t take long before we realized that we were going to get back together.”
They were married on Nov. 28, 2014, at Mount Pleasant United Methodist Church in Little Rock.
“It’s a Norman Rockwell-looking little church, and we just had a small wedding, and we had friends and family there,” Brenda says. “My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, and so we got married the day after Thanksgiving. We just always celebrate our anniversary on the day after Thanksgiving.”
Since their wedding, they have been gloriously happy. Neither of them plays tennis anymore, but they do watch televised matches occasionally. More often, they enjoy college sports together — Brenda cheers for the Razorbacks, and Larry roots for Auburn University, his daughters’ alma mater.
“We have some fun with that. We enjoy eating out and getting with friends,” she says. “We lead a pretty simple life, but it’s just so comfortable.”
Larry admits the path that led him back to Brenda was not one he would have chosen. He feels blessed that he was able to be there for his late wife when she was sick. “I was fortunate enough to be her caregiver,” he says.
Indeed, he counts his blessings.
“I think if Brenda and I had married the first time around she would have put her life into me, and she wouldn’t have become the Brenda Scisson she has,” Larry says.
Brenda left newspapers after a couple of years to work in advertising and public relations, making a name for herself in a career she adored. She is set to retire next week as executive director for development at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences’ College of Nursing, and she looks forward to having more free time to spend with her husband.
“Brenda treats me like the King of Siam,” Larry says. “We just really love each other.”