A Love to Last a Lifetime

Local couple share

55 Years Together

Mike and Phyllis Garrett have been married for 55 years, and they still hold hands.

Phyllis Deloteus and Mike Garrett met in 1959 at a national Presbyterian Youth Rally at University of Tulsa. At the time, Phyllis was living in Bowling Green, Ky., and Mike was attending Maryville College in Maryville, Tenn.

“Phyllis had a friend, Chris, who wanted to meet me because I was going to Maryville,” Mike said. “Phyllis decided to attend Maryville as well, so she was a freshman and I was a sophomore.”

“We had assigned dining seats for a year,” Phyllis said. “We asked if we could sit with Mike, because we knew him from the rally.”

Mike was getting his core curriculum out of the way so he could apply for law school.”

Life on a college campus is insular, especially when there are no cars allowed on campus. Young lovers would have to rely on a bus service to Knoxville or attend special events on campus.

Story by Melonie Roberts

“I was walking Phyllis back from a football game and started to take her hand,” Mike said. “She pulled back and asked if we should really do that.”

“He was dating another girl from my dorm and I didn’t want there to be any problems,” Phyllis added. “But he asked me out again and I let him hold my hand. I knew that he was the one from early on.”

The two proceeded to attend classes and special events, and in her senior year, Mike proposed. She happily said yes.

The two discussed their future and decided to wait until they were out of college before getting married.

Then life happened.

“In 1963, I had the opportunity to attend seminary classes for a year in Chicago,” Mike said. “It was through a Rockefeller Foundation Scholarship.”

“We broke our engagement,” Phyllis said. “I finished school and taught school in Owensboro, Ky. I never dated anyone else. It just wasn’t the right time for Mike. I knew.”

At the seminary, professors lived on campus, creating a family-like environment, making themselves available to students even when classes were not in session.

“At the end of the year, I struggled with the decision on whether to continue with seminary or go to law school,” Mike said. “I didn’t feel like I could wholly give my heart to the seminary, so I left and went to law school at University of Missouri in Columbia. It was a whole different world from the family environment at seminary. On the first day, my professor told us to look to the person on our left, then look at the person on our right. He said at the end of the year, two of the three of us wouldn’t be here.”

Mike tended bar and served as a night supervisor in the student union, as well as preaching at two small, country churches as he worked his way through law school.

“During my last two years of law school, Phyllis taught third grade at Columbia,” Mike said. “Our class graduated one of the first female law students at the university, as well as one of the first [African American] law students.

“Phyllis had an apartment in Columbia, and I did as well,” he said. “We marched against de facto integration in public schools and attended a candlelight vigil for the events that occurred in Birmingham.”

But closer to home, the couple became engaged on April Fool’s Day and married June 10, 1967, at First Presbyterian Church in Bowling Green, with the church pastor and Phyllis’ uncle officiating.

“He gave me the same ring that he gave me the first time,” Phyllis said.

“I just put it away,” Mike said. No exotic honeymoon followed.

“Unless you count a night at Kentucky Lake Holiday Inn and then another night in St. Louis,” Phyllis laughed.

Upon graduating law school, Mike said he had no idea where to practice law or where an opportunity might be. Mike purchased the house at 700 Lincoln two months before Christmas 1967.

“When I first came up to Monett, the train stopped at every town in Arkansas with a “Springs” in its name,” Phyllis said. “I was born in New Orleans, La., and when I was six, we moved to Bowling Green, Ky. I had never lived in a small town. I never thought I would be living in a small town. Monett felt like a ghost town. But I love it. Mike’s mom was my best friend in Monett.”

Mike landed a job with E.L. Monroe in Monett, after the Honorable Bill Pinnell was promoted to Circuit Judge. He later worked with Almon Maus, who he described as a very respected attorney in the state.

“When Almon was appointed as a judge to the Missouri Court of Appeals, I was left by myself with a very busy two-man practice,” he said.

Enter both Victor Head and Carr Wood, who worked at the practice with Mike.

“It’s unusual that the three of us wound up serving as associate circuit judges,” Mike said.

Phyllis initially taught third grade at Monett School District, but ended up quitting in the first semester of her second year, as she prepared for the birth of their first child, Kelly, in 1970.

“Her sister came to help out and she ended up teaching the second semester for Phyllis,” Mike said. “It was great having her here, with us having a newborn.”

That teaching gap lasted 15 years, as Phyllis chose to be a stay-at-home mom and raise their children, Kelly, Pat and Tim.

As the boys reached an age of self-sufficiency, Dr. Ralph Scott contacted Phyllis. She said he “took a chance on her teaching kindergarten for half a year.”

“Twenty-one years later, I retired,” she laughed.

“She is a natural-born teacher,” Mike said. “She still maintains a very special relationship with some of her students.”

Other than a 4-year span when the family moved to Jefferson City, when Mike was appointed supervisor of Liquor Control under Kit Bond, the family has lived in Monett. As the state reorganized, Mike also became responsible for Public Safety, Missouri State Highway Patrol, Missouri Water Patrol and the National Guard for his tenure in Jefferson City.