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- [S4] Knoxville News-Sentinel (Tennessee), 10 Feb 2007.
A lifetime later
Knox couple will wed - sixty-some years after they met
By CHANDRA HARRIS, harrisc@knews.com
February 10, 2007
It took more than 60 years to remember her name.
When it came to him, "it was like someone pounded a mallet over my head," says Ralph Dial. He was driving back from visiting his daughters in Atlanta and Montgomery, Ala., during Christmastime 2002.
He could remember her Mona Lisa smile. He could remember the bountiful black hair she had the first day she walked through Fulton Sylphon Co. looking to report to Dial, her supervisor.
He stood in the World War II defense plant's stairwell and took a deep breath.
Now, after all those years and on this drive home, he suddenly remembered her name was Vinita Anderson.
She was "the prettiest woman I had ever seen," he remembers. But she was married, and her husband was serving in the war. That was in the early '40s, so there was no telling, in 2002, if she was even still living, widowed, or in another part of the world with her husband.
But just remembering her name would do. "It gave me a burst of energy," he said. "I continued driving on home from my Christmas trip, and I didn't get sleepy."
He was wide-awake as he walked through the door of his Farragut home, so Dial decided to go through the recent days' issues of the News Sentinel.
He read a story and then flipped the page to continue, and there, by a remarkable coincidence, was her name with a letter to the editor.
Dial took a deep breath. The nervousness of being that 19-year-old man working in the defense plant and seeing Anderson for the first time came back to him.
After searching phone books to no avail, he called the News Sentinel. The editorial department contacted Anderson on Dial's behalf.
"She called me within two or three minutes," he said.
They caught up on those 60-plus years of living in two hours:
He lived in Farragut. She lived 30 miles away in East Knox County.
He had become a widower in early 2002. Her husband had died in 1991.
He had served in the Army. She had moved to California and then to Elizabethton, Tenn., where she opened a cosmetology school. After losing her husband, she moved back to Knoxville to be near her older sister.
They both had lost their first-born children.
Their conversation continued over dinner at Regas Restaurant.
Four years later, Dial asked for Anderson's hand in marriage.
A coral-colored suit adorned with beaded flowers on the collar will be Anderson's "wedding gown" March 17 - the same day they became engaged last year - for a small ceremony at Concord United Methodist Church.
"And I am having two suits made at John H. Daniel," Dial said. "So I'll see which one goes better with her dress for our wedding day, and that's the one I will wear."
"As old as I am, I can start this thing over again," he said.
"When people ask, 'What do you want to get married for at this age?,' my response is like that saying goes: 'Nobody does it like Sara Lee,' Dial, 83, said. "Nobody does it like Vinita for me."
Anderson, 84, chuckles like a schoolgirl.
"I haven't wavered," he said. "She's still the prettiest girl I have ever seen. And her name is now on my heart."
Chandra Harris may be reached at 865-342-6425.
- [S68] Click Funeral Home, (http://www.clickfuneralhome.com), 25 May 2002.
JEan Leisey Dial obituary
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Abt 1924 - (~ 100 years)
, d. 25 May 2002, Park West Hospital