Farm Boy Meets City Girl

HOW GARY AND RUTH ANN MET

Gary and Ruth Ann (Bell) met at Hastings College, Hastings, Nebraska on October 2, 1963.  It's an easy date to remember because that is the birthday of Gary's sister, Karen.

Hastings College is a small Presbyterian liberal arts college (then about 800 students) in the heartland of Nebraska.   Ruth Ann (from Cheyenne, Wyoming) chose Hastings because she wanted to attend a small church-related school and to be near her grandparents who lived only 30 miles away in Grand Island.  

 Gary completed two semesters at the University of Nebraska Lincoln before he joined the Army in the fall of 1958.  He enrolled at Hastings College in the spring of 1962, immediately after his discharge from Army active duty.   By then he had several scholarship offers from colleges with rifle teams, but Gary did not feel that collegiate rifle shooting, as it was practiced at the time, would help him prepare for the 1962 World Championship and 1964 Olympics, which were his primary shooting goals.  College rifle teams had matches every week and were still shooting on the old, big NRA targets.  He felt he could improve his scores more by focusing on his training for the next international championship rather than on traveling around the country shooting matches that had limited value.  

Another reason he chose Hastings College, which did not have a rifle team, was because he wanted to become involved in other activities like student government.  Gary put himself through college with the GI Bill, National Guard pay, working as a dorm counselor and Army active duty pay during the summers.   Especially after his victory in the Tokyo Olympics there were honoraria from speaking engagements, but those generally had to be limited to mileage and actual expenses in order to protect his amateur status and eligibility to participate in the Olympics.  Then it was forbidden for an Olympic participant to receive any payments related to his athletic performances.

The Hastings College student body ate breakfast and lunch cafeteria style, but for dinner, the students ate together family style with six students seated at each table in the dining room.     It was open seating, and by luck, or fate, Gary arrived late on the 2^nd of October so he took the first empty seat he could find.  He ended up sitting next to Ruth Ann.    By the time dinner was over, Gary had asked Ruth Ann to the weekend football game (their first date).  When he returned to his dorm, he wrote her name on the inside cover of his Greek textbook so he "wouldn't forget it."

Ruth Ann returned to her dorm and told Jan Wood (an upperclassman) about meeting Gary, and having a date, and Jan said "Ruth Ann, do you know who he *IS?*     He's FAMOUS!   He has gold medals on display at Bellevue House!"  (the Student Union).   Gary's World Championship gold medals from Cairo were on display there at the time.

Dating continued, often at the library to study or at the National Guard Armory where Gary used the range for his training.    Hastings College had a strict curfew for women, and Ruth Ann had to be back in her dorm and checked in by 9pm on weekday nights. 

Gary and Ruth Ann attend a spring formal at Hastings College.
  Ruth Ann's mother made the dress.   

During the spring semester, Gary was elected to be the Student Body President for the 1964-1965 school year, which was to be his senior year.  That summer he qualified to go to the Tokyo Olympics in October (blogs on the 1964 Games are coming). After he returned from Tokyo with a gold medal, there were huge demands on his time that included a trip to the White House, national TV appearances and speaking engagements.  He ended up missing 10 of the 16 weeks in the 1964 fall semester, but with generous support from the Hastings College faculty and class notes provided by his friends, he completed all his courses.  As long as he turned in his papers, took all the tests and got his other work done, he was OK.

Gary and Ruth Ann became engaged on January 25, 1965.    Gary bought the engagement ring from Meyer's Jewelers in Hastings.  The owner was the father of a very good friend and classmate of Gary.   Gary asked Ruth Ann if she would like to take a walk in a nearby park, where he presented the ring with these words, "Will you accept this ring as our pledge of a lifetime together?"

Gary and Ruth Ann's engagement picture

Gary graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in History (Magna Cum Laude) from Hastings College on May 23,1965.    Gary and Ruth Ann were married on June 13, 1965 in her hometown of Cheyenne, Wyoming.    

Gary's college graduation day

June 13, 1965

After the summer of 1965, Gary and Ruth Ann moved to San Anselmo, California, where Gary was enrolled as a divinity student at San Francisco Theological Seminary (SFTS).    While he was in the Army, he began to feel that he had a call to the Christian ministry, having been encouraged in this regard by his hometown pastor, Rev. James Darroch.  Enrolling in a seminary became a way to explore that call.    SFTS at that time had a reputation for outstanding scholarship and an esteemed faculty.

During his three years in Seminary, his sense of call diminished, even as he excelled in Hebrew Old Testament language studies.  After his first year of Hebrew, his professor, Dr. David Noel Freedman, appointed Gary to be one of his Teaching Assistants, a position normally reserved for post-graduate students.  Gary calls Dr. Freedman his greatest teacher and the person who taught him the most about the disciplines of real scholarship.  He graduated from seminary on June 13, 1968 with a Master of Arts in Religion (Summa Cum Laude). By the time he graduated he had already taken several post-graduate courses in Ancient Semitic languages and had received a post-graduate fellowship for a year of study in Germany.  That would become a time to decide his future.

Gary teaching a Hebrew class at SFTS