AFTERWORD: THE UNBROKEN CIRCLE

            Ron and I met in February 1963 while students at Southwestern University, located in the small town of Georgetown, Texas. Just north of the state capitol of Austin, Georgetown sits on a dividing line between the black waxy soil of the southern portion of the Blackland Prairie and the rocky rolling hills of the Texas Hill Country. Formed from three Methodist colleges, the university lies on the eastern edge of Georgetown, on a gentle hill amid towering trees.

            The buildings at Southwestern are built from white Austin stone in a clean classic form. The one exception is the original building, the Administration or “Ad” building. Built in the Steamboat Gothic style of the late nineteenth century, the high ceiling structure has wooden floors, towering turrets and large windows. The footsteps of the students changing classes creates a low rumble on the polished wooden floors; but the solitary footsteps of a student echo almost hauntingly, evoking memories of past students.

            Ron was a junior, majoring in psychology from Grand Prairie, Texas, a suburb of Dallas and looking forward to his upcoming twenty-first birthday. I was a sophomore history major, from the West Texas oil town of Midland, some six weeks short of my twentieth birthday.

            We were two of some 30 students taking a sociology class. The class met on the second floor of the old Ad Building, in a classroom that caught the afternoon’s warming spring sunshine through the tall windows. Spring is my favorite time of the year and my usual seat was near the front of the class, close to the windows where I could enjoy a little bit of the forthcoming spring. Ron and his fraternity brothers sat in mass at the back of the class. It was in this class, from his back of the room vantage point, that he first decided to ask me out for a date.

            Ron later told me that he had noticed me before and asked his friends what they knew about me. He was not put off by the report and called me that night at my dorm. Flattered by his attention, after a short conversation, I accepted his offer to go out on a date. Two days later we drove over to “The Hill,” a local drive-in, drank our Cokes and, with me hanging warily close to my door, had our introductory conversation. It would be the start of a friendship, a short courtship and a long marriage.

            We graduated from college, put each other through graduate school and had two daughters. One day, 21 years after our marriage, we were in the Texas Collection of the Dallas Public Library reading an early Dallas County history. Ron did not know much about his father’s family history since his parents divorced when he was young, so we had come to the library to see if we could find out anything about his family. Slowly turning the pages, we finally found the biography of Callaway H. Patrick, where we read that he had married Rhoda Smith. “Wait a minute!” I sputtered, “Those are my family names!” “Well, it looks like they are my family names too,” Ron smiled. Perhaps it explains why I accepted his marriage proposal when marriage was not anywhere in my plans. After all, it is hard to turn down a proposal from one’s own gene pool!

            Ronald R. Patterson, direct descendant of Rev. Guy Smith and Abram T. Smith, and Sue Parks, direct descendant of Rev. Guy Smith and Juliet L. Smith, are fifth cousins, best friends, husband and wife for 32 years. Sometimes I call him Bird, sometimes he calls me Rhoda. We are back where we began; the circle remains unbroken.