Church usher played matchmaker for son
Bernice Thomazin went to church and met an usher who wanted to be her fatherin-law.
Bernice, who grew up on a farm in Nebraska, went to Minneapolis to attend Northwestern Bible College and then Northwestern Hospital School of Nursing.
“I didn’t have any transportation, so I decided to walk the eight blocks to Park Avenue Methodist Church,” she says.
She made friends with many people in the congregation, of course, including the head usher.
“He would joke around with the young people a lot and so forth, and in the course of being there he said to me, ‘I want you for my daughterin-law,’” Bernice says. “I said, ‘Oh. Well, who’s your son?’”
His son, Jerry Renner, was in California, serving in the Air Force.
Bernice met Jerry when he was home on leave in 1955, but Jerry had a girlfriend in California and he showed little interest in Bernice.
He hadn’t been surprised to find that his father wanted to fix him up with someone, though.
“Every time I came home on leave he always had two or three nice young ladies for me to meet,” Jerry says.
He did offer to drive Bernice to Nebraska for her vacation as he made his way back to California.
“We got near her home and she got us on the wrong road and it took a while for us to get her home,” he chuckles. “I wasn’t too sure about her at that point — you know, she lives here and she doesn’t know how to get us to her home. But she’d been away from Nebraska for a long time, too.”
Bernice also might have been a bit nervous, he concedes.
A few months after he returned to California, Jerry wrote a letter to Bernice, telling her he would like to see her when he was on leave again.
“Even though I had some others lined up for me I kept going back to Bernice. I liked Bernice. So I wrote to her and I decided this is the one,” he says.
He was soon in Minneapolis for three weeks, and he and Bernice spent much of that time together.
“His mother packed picnic lunches and he came out about every day or so and he actually asked me to marry him and I said, ‘Well, I don’t know, I have to think about it,’” Bernice says.
They wrote to each other after he went back to California, and one of the letters Bernice got from him was another marriage proposal.
“It was actually about four pages taped together listing all of the qualifications he was looking for and it started out, ‘Roommate wanted,’” she says. “All of the qualifications were descriptions of me, and he drew a picture of a ring and a coupon at the bottom to send in for the ring.”
Bernice still wasn’t sure, but in September 1956 she was on the verge of leaving her nursing position at the hospital in Glencoe, Minn., and starting a new job as hospital superintendent elsewhere.
“In between I had about a week, so I decided to take a trip to California and make up my mind,” she says. “His parents and another couple that were good friends of mine all went to the airport with me to make sure I got on the plane to get out there.”
She was able to reach a decision before she returned to Minnesota.
“We took a drive around Emerald Bay, Calif., and he gave me an emerald-cut diamond,” she says.
They planned their wedding for April 1957, but the government had other ideas. Jerry was to be reassigned to another base and their wedding date would have to be changed to accommodate his orders.
Bernice and Jerry exchanged vows on March 15, 1957, in Park Avenue Methodist Church.
“It wasn’t anything elaborate. At that time we had a few flowers and we served cake and ice cream at the reception,” Bernice says.
They loaded everything into Jerry’s car after the wedding and headed for Sacramento, where Jerry was stationed.
After the Air Force, Jerry went to work as a navigator for an airline. Navigators were later replaced with navigational equipment, so then he got a job teaching pilots to use the navigation systems.
Over the years, the Renners have lived in California, Oklahoma, Florida, Louisiana and Hawaii, and Bernice found nursing positions in most of those areas.
They opened the International House of Pancakes at Markham Street and University Avenue in Little Rock in 1971, and sold it about 10 years ago.
The Renners have three children — Cathy Suen of Bentonville, Carol Goddard of Carrollton, Texas, and Michael Renner of Little Rock. They also have four grandchildren and one great-grandchild. If you have an interesting how-we-met story or know someone who does, please call (501) 378-3496 or e-mail: