A little bit of misinformation leads to love at first sight.
A bit of misinformation can create a lot of inconvenience and irritation. On occasion, it can change a life.
Seventeen-year-old Eloise Thomas was under the impression she would be visiting a church on the last Sunday of September in 1958 to enjoy the sweet sounds of the Southland Singers. The Southland Singers didn’t show up — nor were they supposed to, she soon discovered — but the Spiritual Harmonizers did, including member Matthew Reed.
Eloise lived in Roland and attended First Baptist Church there, but she and a friend went that day to the tiny First Baptist Church in Pankey, a community since annexed by Little Rock. The program had started when they arrived.
As the two girls left the building at intermission, Eloise’s friend spotted Matthew, a former classmate, and introduced him to Eloise.
“We spoke to each other and looked into each other’s eyes and it was love at first sight,” Eloise says.
A couple of weeks later, Eloise was leaving the Arkansas Livestock Exposition (now the Arkansas State Fair) as he was walking in.
She thought it was a coincidence, but it wasn’t.
Their mutual friend had told Matthew they would be there that night. He had hoped to join them but his job at the Little Rock Air Force Base had kept him later than anticipated.
“I made it my business to try to get there but I didn’t get off work on time to get there for the [fair],” he says. “I was just taking a shot in the dark in hopes of catching them before they left.”
Matthew, who was 18, asked if he could give Eloise and her friend a ride home and they quickly agreed. They had taken a bus there, and the buses would soon stop running for the night, if they hadn’t already.
Before he let Eloise out at her house, Matthew asked if he could take her to church the following Sunday.
They went to the worship services at St. Luke Missionary Baptist Church in North Little Rock, then established a routine where they alternated, going to his church and then hers so they could be together almost every weekend.
She traveled with him as well, when his choir performed in Oklahoma and Louisiana, along with St. Louis, Kansas City, Memphis and elsewhere.
“I would just ride along with them,” she explains. “I sure would. I enjoyed that.”
This had been their way for six years by February 1964, when he surprised her with a proposal.
“One night we were coming from church and I stayed with my sister in Little Rock at the time,” she says. “He brought me home and we sat in the car talking for a little bit. While I was sitting there in the car, before I got out to go into the house, he gave me this pretty little white box and I opened it up and saw this beautiful diamond ring in there. He gave it to me and asked me if I would marry him. I said that after six years, of course I would! I had thought that after six years we wouldn’t be getting married.”
They exchanged vows on May 24, 1964, in Eloise’s church.
“I really actually cried when I was leaving home and we were on our way to Little Rock to our new home,” she says. “I had never been away from home before and I left my mom, my dad and two of my sisters who were still at home.”
The Reeds raised three daughters — Priscilla Veasley of Jacksonville, Luburda Herrin of Baltimore and Belinda Moody of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. They have nine grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
Their grandchildren and great-grandchildren escorted them into St. Luke’s recently as they renewed their wedding vows. Eloise was anxious on that day, just as she was on their first wedding day, though she says she thinks the butterflies might not have fluttered quite as hard.
“After 50 years I shouldn’t have been nervous, but I was shaking,” she says. “Everybody was looking right at me. But this time, I knew how it would turn out,” Eloise says.
She hasn’t heard anything of the Southland Singers in a while, but she’s glad for the misunderstanding about their supposed performance in 1958. She didn’t know much about the Spiritual Harmonizers back then either, and doubts she would have gone out of her way to see them.
“I thank God every day that He allowed us to stay together,” she says. “To me, it’s been the perfect marriage. He was the one for me and I was the one for him.”