Blindfolded, she chose her first and only love.
Dorothy Waddles hid from Wilburn Dycus the first time she saw him. When he got a good look at her later — berry stains on her face — he decided she was the one for him.
“He told his double cousins, ‘That’s my wife if I ever get her,’” says Dorothy, who was 14 years old at the time.
Wilburn, a year older, had just moved with his family from Conway to England in 1944, and he had found work plowing the field across the road from her house.
Dorothy was sitting on the front porch when he walked by after finishing his job one afternoon, and she jumped up and took shelter behind her mother’s chair.
“He was just passing by. He was walking down the road and I guess maybe he saw me sitting on the porch. I don’t know if he was coming to talk to me or not but he went on,” she says. “I was real bashful.”
A few days later Dorothy and some of her friends went berry-picking and she might have “sampled” a few in the process.
“I don’t think I had many left,” she says. “I had berry juice all over my mouth.”
Wilburn was turning his plow down the next row when the wagon carrying the berry-pickers rolled past the field, and they stopped to talk to him for a few minutes. Dorothy, as shy as she was, said very little.
It was after church the next night that he got his chance to talk to her.
“Some guy twisted my arm and made me walk with him,” Dorothy says.
Wilburn’s sister was there with her boyfriend, and they were walking with a group of other young people, all of whom were paired off. But Wilburn didn’t have anyone to walk with and neither did Dorothy, so the boyfriend insisted they walk together.
Dorothy’s internal reaction was a mix of excitement and trepidation. Her external one was acceptance.
“He just got hold of my hand and we just walked home,” she says. “I was just wondering what kind of guy was this. He walked me home and kissed me and I’ve been with him ever since.”
He walked her home from church countless times after that. And over the next three years, they rode horses to parties together for many of their dates.
“We had to ride horses because we didn’t have cars,” she says.
Sometimes there were wiener roasts. And sometimes there were games, like the one called “blindfold.” In that game, a girl’s eyes were covered with a handkerchief, and two guys would squeeze one of her fingers. The object was for her to guess which guy was the one she should allow to lead her on a walk.
“Wilburn would squeeze my finger and I would know it was him,” she says. “He would pinch my finger and I would choose him.”
When Wilburn asked her to marry him, she said yes, having hoped to hear that question ever since their first kiss.
“I knew he was the one for me because I didn’t care about anyone else,” she says. “He was my first — and only — love.”
They exchanged their vows at the home of a barber who was also a justice of the peace on Oct. 29, 1947. Dorothy wore a black Sunday dress and Wilburn dressed in jeans for the ceremony, which was witnessed by her mother and his uncle.
They didn’t have a honeymoon or even a reception, opting instead for a simple everyday pleasure to celebrate their nuptials.
“We went to the store and got us a Coke and a bar of candy,” Dorothy says. “That’s all we did. We didn’t go out anywhere.”
Dorothy and Wilburn have lived in Mayflower for most of their married life, with a few stints of work in California over the years.
She chopped cotton from sunup to sundown for 50 cents a day when she was young and living in England, but retired a few years back from Meadowlake Retirement Home, where she was paid considerably more than that. Wilburn farmed for a while, and retired from the Arkansas Highway Department. Their children are Edgar Waddles of North Little Rock, Tommy Dycus of Greenbrier, Bobby Dycus of Scott, Debra Johnston of Conway, and Larry Dycus, Garry Dycus, Julie Johnson and Lisa Rushing, all of Mayflower. They’ve given the couple 13 grandchildren and 26 great-grandchildren.
Wilburn and Dorothy live a block from the Pentecostal church they attend in Mayflower. Until recent years, they walked there regularly, their family walking behind them and seeing them grasp each other’s hands, just like they did on that first night after church nearly 70 years ago.
“Can you believe it?” Dorothy says. “It’s been a long time.” If you have an interesting howwe-met story or know someone who does, please call (501) 3783496 or e-mail:
cjenkins@arkansasonline.com