My husband and I have the honor of being the very first Andrew Sweethearts. This is how it happened:
It was 1956. I was 17 and about to graduate from high school. While getting my hair cut, I glanced through Redbook magazine and found in the back pages several columns advertising schools and colleges. One of the ads was for a small, women’s junior college affiliated with the Methodist church, located in a small town in South Georgia. The college ad kept burning a hole in my purse, and a couple of days later I re-read it and decided to speak with my minister about it. He urged me to apply. Dr. George Gambill, the new president of the college, sent me my acceptance letter. His letter also advised me that the school had gone co-ed and that so far two boys had registered – one from as far south from the school as I was from the north, and one from a 20-year-old who had been to business school in Atlanta but was thinking of working toward becoming a minister. His name was Wayne Cook. As I had a boyfriend back in Ohio, I didn’t give much thought to either of the boys until a group of us were invited to Wayne’s family farm in Colquitt, GA for a long weekend. I knew then that I would always love Wayne. It was just a short time until I got a message to go to the front parlor –that someone was waiting for me there. Wayne looked at me and said he loved me and then softly kissed me. After a couple of ups and downs, we were married on May 29, 1959. We were blessed with three sons and a daughter. Our son, Paul ’80, also married his Andrew College Sweetheart, Margie Dooley ’81 in 1983.