By Mickey Dunaway

I overheard a friend recently who said, “Tonight is our weekly date night. We never miss one.”  I smiled a little. My wife, Sandy, and I quit having weekly date nights once we said, “I do,” more than 56 years ago. That little factoid deserves an explanation!

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We were married on December 22, 1968. It was my senior year at Auburn, and soon after the holiday honeymoon, we moved to the Loveliest Village on the Plains—or at least close to it in Salem, Alabama—about 15 miles from campus. I was scheduled to do my student teaching at Kendrick High School in Columbus, Georgia— about 15 miles from Salem, so it seemed like a good location.

We lived in a barn on a farm—At least half of it was a barn. The farm owner lived in Columbus and had built two tiny apartments in an upscale barn. We agreed that we would not pay rent, and I would take care of the upkeep on farm-type things. Sounds like every Alabama fan’s view of Auburn, doesn’t it? It was close. We had cows, a tractor, and lots of land. 

The one thing we did not have was spending money for newlywed date nights. We worked hard to make the unique first year of married life on the farm a success.

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While I did my student teaching in Columbus, Sandy was working on campus as a secretary in the School of Business. Can you see the makings of the dilemma since we only had one car and our jobs were in opposite directions?

Sandy’s day started in Auburn at 8:00 a.m. Central Time. My internship started at 7:30 Eastern Time Zone in Columbus in the opposite direction. I needed to find a way to drive Sandy to Auburn, turn around, and make it to my classroom.

Although Columbus was 30 miles from Auburn, carpools from Columbus flourished for folks who just didn’t want to move to Auburn. I remember many of them were military spouses from Fort Benning working on advanced degrees. (Our vet, where we now live in Cornelius, NC, graduated from the Auburn School of Veterinary Medicine while her husband was stationed at Fort Benning.)  Small world.

The carpool solved our dilemma of getting us to our jobs on time. Here is how it worked: I would drive Sandy to meet her carpool in Columbus at 7:00 a.m., giving the carpoolers enough time to arrive in Auburn by 7:15 and giving me time to be at my classroom door at Kendrick High School by 7:30. When my school day ended, I would drive to Auburn and pick Sandy up and drive back home to Salem. As I calculate it, that was ±70 miles a day and 250 miles a week and somewhere near 5000 miles that spring quarter, and my six-cylinder, four-speed, stick shift Camaro was stressed more than we were.  

The carpooling idea worked, but the stress of it all took its toll, so we gave up farm life, and in my last quarter, we moved back to Auburn into married student housing on campus. Unfortunately, this meant we now had to pay rent. 

Somehow, we found the monthly rent, and I graduated at the end of the summer and took a job teaching and coaching at the high school I graduated from in Semmes, Alabama, in West Mobile County. I made a whopping $6200 yearly, which included extra pay for coaching. Sandy found a job as a secretary at International Paper Company—making more than I did. We were happy and now had enough spare change for date nights, but there was one big hiccup. Practices ran until 6:00 p.m. each day, games were at night, and all the staff were expected to be at the game. There went date night. 

Soon, our first child was born, and he saw his first football game at six weeks and every other game that season. Then came basketball with two to three games a week, and he saw those games, too. Our second son was born four years after the first son and with cerebral palsy. Clearly, the load had just gotten unreasonably heavy for our family, so I quit coaching.

Never missed it as I had always enjoyed the teaching aspects of my job. The Almighty’s way of getting me on the path where I belonged—where I would find a lifetime satisfaction. In eleven years as a high school principal, I handed diplomas to almost 2800 students, sending them on the way to their futures. Of course, the teachers did all the hard work with little recognition. Hire great teachers who put students first, know their subject area deeply, and have a combination of love and high expectations for all students; success is inevitable.

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Sandy has been a coach’s wife, a principal’s wife, a superintendent’s wife, and a professor’s wife. Her support allowed me to find my way in my profession because we decided when our kids came along—that when we could, we would eat supper at home together. I used to (only in my head) castigate my mother and daddy for never going anywhere. Of course, that was only partially true, because we fished, hunted, and went to family reunions. After a hard day as a middle school teacher and an automobile mechanic, still they came to watch me play basketball when we played at home. 

At a certain point in my seven decades, I understood that life is about perspective a function of age,  the sum of experiences—good and flawed— and that my mother and daddy were seldom wrong.

We are home folks. Always have been. We enjoy each other’s company at home. That lifestyle in retirement brings us a sense of peace and satisfaction. 

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Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.

William Shakespeare