Currents An Enduring Love

An Evening With Ronnie and Jack Burnish

STORY BY LISA STITES

Ithought I’d write a story about a couple that is still clearly in love after many years of marriage. It would be a nice little happy story perfect for Valentine’s Day. So Jeffrey and I met Jack and Ronnie Burnish for dinner (thanks for the table space San Felipe). And we did talk about them as a couple — how they met, when they married, how they start their day as a couple and as business partners. But then my story kind of got hijacked and we learned so much more. We got completely caught up in the many amazing stories we heard from Jack and Ronnie, but most of them weren’t the stories I expected to get.

Honestly, I shouldn’t have been surprised. It’s a journalism lesson I learned many years ago. You can never go into a story thinking that you know what the story will be. Never. And in this case, I got the feeling that while Jack and Ronnie were happy for the company and interesting conversation, they were not entirely sold on a story about them. Most people are genuinely humble and don’t like to brag, and Jack and Ronnie are no exception. But thankfully, they were both quick to share stories, and I felt like we could sit and talk with them for hours.

It was a great night.

So how did this couple meet and work their way toward marriage? There are two versions to the story.

First, Jack told his. Jack is a real estate instructor and he said he tells this story every time he teaches a new class. It was 1993, and he and Ronnie had mutual friends. They thought Jack would like to meet Ronnie, so they invited the two of them over. It was February 14. (Note: I promise, I am not making this up). It was just another day to him, but he agreed to the evening’s plans. He said she walked in the door, there was the usual small talk in the foyer, and then she walked across the room. Jack said she was only feet away when he made his declaration.

“I’m going to marry that girl,” he recalled saying.

Very quickly, Ronnie stepped in to share her side of the story.

“Okay, my version,” she said. Ronnie’s daughter had graduated high school, and Ronnie said she was having none of “that dating stuff.” She said the third time her friends asked her to come over and meet Jack, she finally decided to go over because she wanted to get them off her back. She had moved to the area and was working at Progress Energy, rooming with her supervisor. They needed to find a new place, and she knew Jack worked in real estate, so that night, she asked him about a rental. Jack assured her that he had just the place for them.

“He no more knew a place than a man on the moon,” she said. Jack went back to the office the next day and told his staff that they needed to find a place by 4:30 in the afternoon or he was going to be in trouble. He found them a house, and the two ladies in the office ended up helping to plan Jack and Ronnie’s wedding in November of 1995. They got married the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and that’s when they celebrate their anniversary, no matter what the date is.

“We start our holidays then,” Ronnie said.

Both had been married before, and they were combining households. For the wedding, everyone brought their favorite dish, and Ronnie said they had the “neatest spread. And because he was a musician, we had three bands.” Jack plays tenor sax, clarinet and upright bass, and he was in The Islanders Band, which used to play at the Harbor House on Oak Island.

Jack moved to Southport as a senior in high school, and he said he knew he wanted to get things off on the right foot.

“I was sitting in that class, and I knew whoever I picked for a friend would either make me or break me. I picked Bill Blake and we’re still best friends,” he said. Over the years, Jack worked in municipal government, including serving as the first-ever town manager for Hamlet, North Carolina. He’s also worked in construction, and actually built the original Southport-Oak Island Chamber of Commerce building. The couple are involved in the Chamber as the self-appointed “warm body committee.”

“We try to show up at all the events,” Ronnie explained.

Ronnie’s career path includes 30 years as a successful ghostwriter, and she is also publishing episodic stories on Amazon’s Kindle Vella. She grew up on a farm near Raleigh, and often pulls from those experiences in her writing. She also loves doing historical research.

The two start their day with a business meeting and a Bible study. And at this point in life, they also feel an obligation to help others achieve their goals. It’s why Ronnie “has” to get her stories out, and why Jack got back into teaching real estate. He had been a community college instructor in the 1980s, but grew away from it. But something he learned changed his mind — through life, we accumulate education, and accumulate knowledge, and the longer we pursue it, the more we have at the time of our passing.

“I had been in real estate for 30 years, had been a building contractor, had other businesses, and I thought I am going to go back into teaching. You have a moral obligation to share what you know,” he said. “I felt an obligation to teach. When I’m teaching, I am a sort of library.”

We left dinner that night with promises to get together soon, and I am going to hold them to it. I still have much to learn from Jack and Ronnie.

So as it turns out, this is still really a love story. We could see it in his eyes whenever Jack looked at Ronnie, and we heard it in her voice when she touched his arm and prompted him to tell a story. It’s also about love of companionship and meeting new friends, love of hearing others’ tales and learning from them, and love of the opportunity to weave those tales into words on a page.

Happy Valentine’s Day.