She sang in a trio the day he saw them as a couple
Larry Tyner was going to ask to be introduced to the girl singing as part of a trio in his church in 1965. He didn’t have to — that girl, Peggy Curtis, had already been told she would be meeting him.
“This lady that I was with, she had told me he was a really nice guy because she had gone to church with him a long time before that,” says Peggy, who was 15 then. “She told me about him but I don’t think she had told him about me. She just said, ‘There’s this really cute, sweet guy that I think you would like.’”
That lady had given Peggy a ride to Hyde Park Baptist Church in Little Rock’s midtown.
“Her husband was gone a lot with work and her children were already grown so she would take us around to things and do things like that,” says Peggy of the woman who had moved and went to church with her at Hope Baptist by then.
Larry was 17.
“I noticed her pretty smile and the way she looked, the color of her hair,” he says. “When I first looked at her I just knew she was the one for me.”
When the service ended, the people in the congregation mingled as people do in small churches. This gave Peggy and Larry a chance to meet, and for him to ask for her phone number.
“Well, I really don’t know if I gave him my number that day or if he got it from this lady who introduced us,” she says.
Either way, he called to ask her for a date.
“She came highly recommended by this friend and her family and she highly recommended me to Peggy because she knew my family and we just kind of came together that way,” Larry says.
Larry and Peggy went to Central High School, though they don’t recall their paths intersecting before they met at his church.
They saw a movie and went to a dairy bar on their first date. They liked playing miniature golf, hanging out with friends and doing things at each other’s churches together on later dates. But after just a year together, Larry finished high school and joined the U.S. Navy. He went on active duty the day after graduation and was on his way to boot camp in San Diego.
“I was assigned to the USS Randolph and we patrolled the north Atlantic for Russian subs,” Larry says. “We had sonar planes that flew out, we had a submarine with us, four destroyer escorts. I was on it for about eight months and then I applied for hospital corps school and was sent to Great Lakes, Ill., for five months, then Camp Lejeune, N.C., to learn how to be a Marine. They told us we were all going to Vietnam because we’d had this special training.”
He was allowed to choose his own post for what was expected to be about six months before he was sent to Vietnam, and his pick was Memphis, because of its
proximity to home.
“There were a lot of phone calls and a lot of letters. She was always good to write me when I was away and when I was on board the ship I looked forward to getting those letters,” Larry says. “I think it was always in my mind that I was going to marry this girl. In fact, before we got married, when I was in Great Lakes, I went out and got her name tattooed on my arm, with a little heart because I just knew I was going to marry her.”
Peggy was not amused. She worried about what Larry’s mother would think, as well as about what would happen if they broke up and he had to figure out how to have it removed or covered.
Though Peggy’s father argued that Larry’s imminent departure for Vietnam was a reason to put their future on hold, it actually acted as a catalyst in their plans to marry.
They exchanged their vows on Dec. 15, 1967, at Hope Baptist Church.
Peggy moved with Larry into base housing in Memphis, where they stayed for not just six months but for two years, until he was discharged in April 1969 without being deployed to Vietnam.
The Tyners have two daughters — Stephanie Winstanley and Jessica Morgan, both of Little Rock. They also have two granddaughters.
Larry got a degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock after he and Peggy were married; she got a degree in nutrition from the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. He retired as an assistant chief with the Little Rock Fire Department. She retired from Baptist Health. These days, Larry likes to ride his Harley Davidson, and they enjoy working with the food ministry at the Church at Rock Creek.
“She’s one of the most patient, forgiving and kind women that I know,” Larry says of Peggy. “She’s probably responsible for 80 percent of our marriage working out. She’s a good woman and the best decision I ever made was to marry her.”