How Joanna and I got together . . . the beginning of our love story 
by Bill Jones

(Scroll to the end for links to my previous blog tributes to Joanna since her passing.)

Joanna would often give me the look I knew so well when I would start telling one of my stories to someone – the look that said, “Here we go again. It may be the first time for them, but I’ve heard this one a hundred . . . no, must be a thousand . . . times.”

The one that really made her cringe was the one about Stan Musial turning me down for an autograph when I was 14. That one may have been more in the million-times category than the thousands.

But my favorite story is the one of how Joanna and I got together, and I think it’s also my best story – and it’s all true (so is the Musial story, by the way).

Joanna entered Oklahoma Baptist University as a freshman in the fall of 1972 (my senior year). She was 19 years old and had never been away from her native Hong Kong – then a British colony – in her life.

Her parents sent her to the States to get an education (not a husband!), because they felt it offered her the best opportunity for a good education. She had planned to come with a friend, who opted out at the last minute. So she was truly on her own. She had a choice between Pepperdine University in California and Oklahoma Baptist University. Don’t ask me how she chose OBU; I’m not sure she even remembered how she made that decision. She wasn’t a Christian at that time, didn’t have any faith background in her family.

Anyway, her plane landed at Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, and she was met there by OBU’s international students liaison, Miss Eunice Short, who was a professor and historian, and had been at OBU seemingly forever. Joanna would remember thinking, as Miss Short drove her the 40 miles from Oklahoma City to Shawnee, “What is all this red dirt I’m seeing . . . and all this open land?” She was used to skyscrapers, high-rises, the waters of Hong Kong harbor, and very little unoccupied land. And NO red dirt!

I had several close Chinese friends at OBU, and often ate meals with them in the cafeteria . . . I was very close to the Chinese community there. A decade earlier, for a year after my parents and I arrived in Kansas City, MO, in July 1962, I had learned to love not just Chinese people but Chinese cooking! Mother was secretary to the music minister at our church, Richard Lin, who was an OBU professor on sabbatical to study for his doctorate at the conservatory in Kansas City. He and his wife, Julia, had three sons and a daughter. Mother loved having little Anita Lin sit with her during worship services while Anita’s daddy led the music and her mommy sang in the choir. Of the three sons, Dick (Richard, Jr.) was about my age, Steven was a year or so younger, and Joe was a couple years younger than that. I became good friends with the boys. Almost every Sunday during that year before they returned to Oklahoma in the fall of ’63, either the three boys would come to my house for lunch and to play all afternoon, or I would go to their house for the same. Julia Lin was a wonderful cook, and that’s where I learned to love fried rice and other delicious Chinese delights.

So back to OBU in the fall of 1972. The Chinese Students Association (CSA) at OBU decided, for the first time, to pledge some American students for membership in the Association. The initiation rite would be for the American students to learn to speak Cantonese, which was the primary dialect of Hong Kong, from which most of the Chinese students at OBU hailed. Well, since I was already such a part of the Chinese community there, it was natural that they would invite me as one of the American students to pledge. To help us learn Cantonese, they assigned a Chinese student to teach us – calling that student our “big sister” or “big brother.” The president of the CSA that year was a good friend of mine, Warren Lee. In fact, Warren and I were both among the seven resident assistants in Brotherhood Dorm that year. Well, Warren told me that he was assigning Joanna Wong as my “big sister,” and then told me, point-blank, that his intention was to “set up the two of you” to date each other. At that point, I had seen Joanna in the cafeteria but not gotten to know her, and nothing had clicked between us. But I said, “Okay, Warren, whatever,” thinking little more of it.

So Joanna and I started meeting in the University Center for her to teach me to speak Cantonese. She was an excellent teacher, and – if I do say so myself (and I do) – I was a good student, even down to pronouncing the words/phrases with the right inflection. I’m attaching three pages from the many pages of notes from my Cantonese lessons with Joanna.

List of tasks Joanna expected me to recite for the Cantonese-speaking contest (1-7 are in her handwriting)

At top, the name tag Joanna made for me – with my Chinese name, in both Cantonese and English – to wear at the CSA initiation

Song Joanna taught me for the contest

The judge of the contest was to be Eunice Short’s sister, Jaxie. Jaxie was a longtime missionary to Hong Kong, who was on furlough for a year and was serving as OBU’s missionary-in-residence. The Short sisters became very special to Joanna and me. When we were married at Shawnee’s University Baptist Church in September 1976, a few months after Joanna’s graduation, Eunice Short gave us our wedding reception at the church. Years later, in November 1988, when Joanna and I returned for Homecoming (my graduating class’s 15th anniversary reunion), we brought two little ones – Alison (who would turn 7 on December 1) and Travis (who would turn 3 on November 25) with us. Married OBU students were offering babysitting services to alumni so we could attend all of the Homecoming events. Joanna and I were driving to the apartments, just off-campus, where our babysitters were located, when we noticed a car that seemed to be following us. Everywhere we turned, they turned. When we sped up, they sped up. When we arrived at the apartments, the car pulled up next to us. Lo and behold, it was Eunice and Jaxie Short, who had spotted us and wanted to say hi (and meet our kids). That was the last time we saw them. What a special pair they were!

Anyway, I don’t really remember anything about the contest – only that I won, and, modesty aside, it really wasn’t much of a contest!

Even after all those times meeting for our Cantonese lessons, nothing had particularly sparked between us – at least, I don’t think it had. But then came the party to celebrate the induction of the new members into the CSA. It was that night – January 5, 1973 – that I began to see Joanna in a different light. I remember saying to myself, “You know, she sure has a beautiful smile and is a lot of fun to be with. I really ought to ask her out.”

Well, if you had known me back then, you’d know I was the shyest guy you’d ever known. I didn’t have dates, because I never had the guts to ask a girl out. I had so many unfulfilled crushes, but I guess none of those crushes were serious enough to motivate me to overcome my fears of rejection. But this time, my fears had met their match. It took everything I had – and almost 2 weeks – but I finally asked her out to an OBU basketball game, and to my surprise, she said YES!

So we went to an OBU basketball game on a Saturday night, January 20, 1973. Afterwards, we walked across Kickapoo Street to Pizza Hut, but it was packed to the gills, just too crowded. So we decided to walk down the street to the less-crowded Grubsteak, which was known for its sub sandwiches (and is still legendary among OBU students of our day). So we got a bite to eat and a Coke, or whatever.

We broke up twice that first year, both times because of my own stupid insecurities. When we met to talk after a month apart following the second breakup, I said to her, “Okay, if we get back together this time, it’s going to be for good!” And it was – for another 3 years until we married, and then 44-1/2 years of marriage. Of course, there’s another side story there. The rest of her life, she would always remind me that I had never proposed to her. And I would always remind her, “But don’t you remember? I said if we got back together, it would be for good. That was my proposal.” She never bought that, and neither have any of our friends – even MY friends – ever bought that. Oh well.

By the way, remember what I wrote earlier about knowing the Lins in Kansas City (Dr. Lin wound up being one of my references for admission to OBU) and Mother enjoying taking care of little Anita during worship services? Well, I eventually called Mother and Daddy and told them about the beautiful Chinese girl I was dating. They were on separate phones, one on the phone in their bedroom, and the other on the kitchen phone. I learned later that, as soon as they hung up the phone, they both ran down the hallway to meet each other, with one of them – probably Mother – exclaiming, “We’re going to have some Chinese grandbabies,” and laughing and celebrating together. They were getting a little ahead of where we were in our relationship, but yes, they eventually got two “Chinese grandbabies” they loved and doted on.

So that’s how a love story that lasted over 48 years began. Joanna is the love of my life and always will be. How God brought us together, I’ll never understand, but I’ll always be thankful, for I know this was a marriage truly made in heaven. We haven’t seen Warren Lee since he visited us in Denver in the early 1980s, so I don’t know where he is, but I’ll always be thankful to him, too, for deciding to “set me up” with Joanna Wong.

My previous blog tribute to Joanna since her passing on February 14:

2/19/21 – The painful journey that took the love of my life, Joanna . . . to the great heavenly banquet