Long phone conversations led to lifetime together
Georgia Hill sat next to Bruce Schratz at a fraternity dinner in Lonoke in August 1953, but it wasn’t until they left town that he asked for her phone number.
“I had been at that house before,” says Georgia, who had attended the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, the year before and had gotten to know some Sigma Chis there. “I had dated the boy whose home the dinner was in. They had a big farm down there, and his mom had me out that summer to try to teach me how to fish. I wasn’t very happy with it. I wouldn’t bait the hook, I wouldn’t take the fish off. Oh, that was not my cup of tea.”
Bruce, then a first year medical student, did his undergraduate work at the university.
“I was a Sigma Chi guy, so that’s why I was coming to the dinner,” he says.
Georgia and Bruce were seated together during the dinner. When the dinner was over the group migrated to the Marion Hotel in Little Rock for dancing.
“I was dancing with her and I said, ‘I might like to call you sometime,’” he says.
Bruce’s coursework kept him busy, but they found time to have long phone conversations over the following weeks.
Georgia was working for a title and abstract company that belonged to a family friend — who was also a friend of Bruce’s family, although Georgia and Bruce’s families didn’t know each other. She also took volunteer shifts as a Gray Lady for the Red Cross.
She was volunteering in pediatrics at then-University Hospital (now University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences), holding up a little girl with spinal tuberculosis one day after they began their phone conversations, when she looked up and saw Bruce leaning against the wall. He was in the hospital because of medical school and had dropped by to say hello.
“I thought, ‘My gosh, he is really good looking,’” she says. “That’s when it really dawned on me.”
Their first date was in October, when they went to a local hangout, The Pitcher, for burgers and pitchers of beer.
“We just sat and talked and talked,” Georgia says.
They went to Main Street in Little Rock to see the livestock parade for their second date.
“The parade was secondary,” Bruce says. “The main thing was that I was looking at it with her.”
In February, tragedy struck Bruce’s family. His grandparents, on their way from their home in DeValls Bluff to an appointment with an eye doctor in Memphis, were hit head on by a drunken driver and killed instantly.
Georgia’s boss and his wife — friends of the Schratzes — picked her up and took her with them to DeValls Bluff to be with Bruce and his family.
“That kind of cemented our feelings, I guess,” she says. “I got to really know his family and that was that was a good thing — in the middle of a bad thing.”
Georgia had been expecting a proposal from Bruce, although she wasn’t sure when it might come. So she was only a little surprised when he picked her up for a date one night in March and gave her a ring.
“I don’t even know where we were going,” she says, adding that it didn’t really matter after that. Anywhere was fine with her if they were going there together.
They exchanged their vows at 10 a.m. June 30, 1954, at Our Lady of the Holy Souls Catholic Church in Little Rock.
“We had a brunch to celebrate at Trio’s, with most of the kids there,” Bruce says of their recent 65th anniversary. “I said to them, ‘What were we thinking? I was a sophomore in med school and had two more years of med school and a year of internship before I could even get out and start making money, and here we were getting married. How did we do that?’ It was hectic for sure, and then she got pregnant right away, too.”
Bruce did his internship at the then-St. Vincent Infirmary and then joined the Air Force. He was stationed in San Antonio and then in Waco, Texas, where he led the obstetrics department. As soon as he got out of the Air Force, he and Georgia and their children returned to Levy in North Little Rock where he started a solo practice. He was a founding physician at then-Baptist Memorial Hospital in North Little Rock. He retired in 1997.
Georgia has been involved with the Little Rock Dog Training Club and with the Little Rock Bridge Club.
The Schratzes have six children — Bruce Jr., Alan and Diane, all of Little Rock, Steven of Maumelle, James of St. Louis, and Joe of Jonesboro. They also have eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Bruce made 13 medical mission trips to Honduras — Georgia joined him on two — and they have traveled to Italy, Ireland, England and Canada and they have been on two pilgrimages to the Holy Land.
Georgia isn’t sure how she knew Bruce was the right man for her, but after just five months of dating, she did.
“I have no regrets,” she says.
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