Gary Pierce said “Hey, let’s go out on a double date.” My date was Linda Nielsen, and I drove to Orem to pick up Gary. We then drove to Heritage Halls at Brigham Young University to get his date. Her name was Juanita Carol Hood.
He went into the dorm to pick up his date, and came out and got into the back seat. It was dark. So I turned on the interior lights, and we introduced the four of us to each other. The moment he introduced his date to me, I knew that his date, Carol was who I was going to marry.
I noticed after that date that he never dated her anymore. So I got him lined up with a girl that I knew who he started to date on a regular basis. He wanted to go on another double date, and at first, I acted like I didn’t know who I could get a date with. But I finally got the courage to say to him, “Well, why don’t you see if that girl that you took out a month ago would go with me.” So he got me a date. It was our first date, and we courted for five months before getting engaged in May of 1963.
Interestingly enough, when I started to date her, she was dating a fellow at Brigham Young University, who was running for the student body president of the school. After I proposed to her and she accepted, he was just positive that she had made the wrong choice. He wanted her to go up the canyon with him and pray about it.
She said, “No. I’ve made my decision. This is who I’m going to marry.”
When school was finished at the end of May, Gary Pierce, his date and I took Carol to California to meet her parents and her sister and brother. We visited for 2 days then Carol stayed with her parents for 6 weeks until closer to the wedding. Carol made the trip back to Pleasant Grove on a bus and stayed with Grandma Gertrude until the Wedding.
Most of the time, when we were courting, we would go to movies and dances. We always went to church together every Sunday. She was very strong in living the church standards and always concerned about the other person more than herself. I found that she was a very genuine person. She wasn’t one to put on any airs at all. She was very down to earth.
