New neighbor becomes friend and then more
When Peggy Delling and her family moved into the Mabelvale community in 1942, Alvia “Sonny” Hooker showed up to check everything out.
“He came down to see what the big truck was doing,” says Peggy, who was just 11 years old, finishing up fifth grade, when she moved from a farm near Pine Bluff to one in Mabelvale.
Sonny, 13 then, arrived with a friend to watch the family unload their belongings — and to closely examine all the animals and equipment he didn’t have at his own house.
Peggy didn’t pay much attention to the boys roaming around outside.
“I was busy looking at the new house,” Peggy says.
They went to school together, though, and she got to know Sonny there.
“We went all the way through the 12th grade,” she says. “In that little community, everybody was just good friends. The church had a play night on Friday night, and we all went down and played volleyball and badminton and so forth.”
When they were 14 and 16, though, that changed.
“I think it changed for us both at about the same time. It was kind of a mutual agreement,” she says. “I had a date with his best friend.”
Sonny and Peggy had been on one date before that. He showed up at her house before his friend did and told her he didn’t think she should go out with his friend — he thought she should go out with him, instead.
“I said, ‘Well, who’s going to tell Jim?’ And he said, ‘I’ll go tell him,’” Peggy says.
Sonny managed to deliver the news so diplomatically that he and Jim remained friends for years afterward.
Sonny and Peggy don’t know what movie they saw on that definitive night out, but Peggy remembers going on a double date with Sonny to see the Ice Follies at Robinson Auditorium to celebrate her 16th birthday.
“That was a lot of fun,” she says. “And our friends went with us. I really enjoyed that.”
They played canasta with friends and kept going to the play nights at the church for volleyball and badminton while they finished school. After he graduated, Sonny joined the U.S. Army.
Right after enlisting, Sonny went back to the high school and knocked on the study hall door. He asked the teacher who opened the door if he could see Peggy, and the teacher agreed.
“That’s when he gave me my ring,” Peggy says. “We went home, and he talked to my mama. And my daddy came home, and he talked to daddy. They told him that was OK. My family loved him.”
They were engaged when he was sent to Okinawa, and he was allowed to come home early because he agreed to sign up for the U.S. Army Reserves, which led to a second deployment.
Peggy and Sonny kept in touch the only way they could while he was away.
“We had a lot of letters going back and forth,” she says, admitting that, of course, she was worried about her beloved. “We prayed a lot and you just had faith that he would be [returning] home.”
Sonny was away for three years, returning home just once for some basic training at Fort Chaffee in Fort Smith.
“It’s a long time, and I did a lot of growing up in that time,” she says. “He did, too, of course. I got to know him a little differently through those letters because he had big responsibilities.”
Sonny returned home to Mabelvale around Christmas 1949, and they set their wedding date for June.
“Around the first of March, he said, ‘Why are we waiting?’ We just mutually agreed to go ahead and get married. We checked with the minister and the church and that was it.”
They exchanged their vows on March 3, 1950.
“Our best friend stood up for us. We didn’t have a big wedding, but we had a nice wedding at the church. The minister and his wife were our best friends, and they helped us,” she says.
Spring had come early that year and their friends decorated the church with spring blossoms.
“We went home for a reception with cake and punch,” Peggy says. “We didn’t even have a car. We got one soon after, though.”
They bought a car from Sonny’s aunt and drove it on their honeymoon to New Orleans.
“I found out that the windshield wipers wouldn’t work and I had to use the windshield wipers out the car door,” she says.
Peggy and Sonny, who live in North Little Rock, raised two daughters — Mary Ann Williams of North Little Rock and Shirley Hooker, who is deceased. They also have two grandchildren.
Sonny was the 13th surveyor licensed in the state of Arkansas, and he retired as a surveyor.
“One of the things I liked about him when I first met him and all the way up through today is that he has the most beautiful manners, the way he treats me,” says Peggy of the man she married more than 70 years ago. “He is very, very considerate and he always has been.”
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