Together for 40 Valentines Day pizzas

It was Valentines Day 1972 when a young couple, both in the military, sat across a table from one another in Pizza Hut in North Little Rock. They were so entranced with one another that they neglected their companion and the pizza, but not one another. Thus began a love story that has seen the two through many years, different cities, different jobs and ultimately landed them in Pea Ridge.

Bob Cottingham clearly remembers the eve of Valentines Day. He had just gotten in from a flight training mission and headed to the NCO Club for dinner and a Coke. Sue Keeling, a medical technician in the Air Force, walked up to the bar where he was sitting, got a Coke and a handful of cherries and he made a snide remark, he recalls. He followed her to her table where she and her roommate sat and struck up a conversation, closing with an invitation to dinner for the following day.

Ironically, Bob recalls that Sue’s roommate thought he was interested in her because he had sat by her, but he said it was to be “strategically” positioned so as to watch Sue as they talked.

“I wanted to be face to face without getting in her space,” he said. During their first date, he said the roommate ate the pizzaall by herself while he and Sue talked.

Sue remembers how genuinely nice he was and that he offered her and her friend a ride back tothe WAC barracks because it was raining.

Before too long, Bob was sent overseas. He said there was no commitment prior to his departure because “things were pretty volatile back then” in Vietnam.

“We wrote to each other. Wewrote letters every day. I don’t think I missed a day,” Sue remembers of Bob’s time overseas.

When he returned stateside and his enlistment was up, the two met in San Francisco where they had a “mini-vacation,” then went up to Washington state to meet Sue’s family. There, he proposed to her in her uncle’s back yard overlooking the Yakima Valley orchards, he recalls.

“He made sure the proposal was very romantic.

He got down on one knee,” Sue recalled.

“We got married the following January,” he said, then Sue was released from military service and their first child, a daughter, was born 10 months later.

They were married in a Methodist church just down from the Pizza Hut where they’d had their first date, he said, addingthat a “full scale blizzard” hit thwarting their honeymoon plans and stranding them in North Little Rock.

Sue’s family, although in Washington, had originally been from northwest Arkansas and had moved to the northwest to work in the apple orchards, he said. After the wedding, the young couple moved to Wichita where Bob worked in the aircraft industry.

Eventually, he went toschool, earned a degree in art and changed careers to work in art, eventually coming to Bentonville to work with Benton County Publishing. He later returned to working in aviation. Sue worked at Bates Hospital for three years and then ran an in-home daycare for several years.

Bob, now a lead maintenance technician for Wal-Mart Aviation, was from Wichita, Kan.

Sue was from Yakima, Wash. He is a Pea Ridge City Council member.

They have two children - Candi, who lives in California, and John Cottingham, who lives in northwest Arkansas, and two grandchildren.

Smiling, Bob said of his bride: “She had a real attractive smile. She was really friendly. It was meant to be.

“Being in the militaryin war time was kind of a weird sensation. I realized I might not come back and didn’t want to leave any strings untied,” he said, but admitted he “pretty much had my direction set. She was my missing link. I was very adamant that she was the one God had for me.”

Being married is hard work, Sue said, but advises young couples to work hard and to keep a sense of humor.

News, Pages 1 on 02/13/2013