Timeless Love: Even though time and East itself has evolved, love has always stayed the same

Surrounded by 30 brace-faced teens in denim skirts and sequin tops, then-seventh-graders Ally Fields and Dale Smith didn’t notice each other at first, amid the awkward gender divide and blaring Usher songs at the Asbury Methodist Church dance. As the mixer progressed, they found their way into a conversation about the song “Hey Ya!” by Outcast.

It was a hot Friday night in the Asbury basement, and love was in the air.

So, like any 14 year old middle school romantics, that single conversation they had in that church and a couple “hello’s” in the halls lit a spark that resulted in mutual feelings for each other — they began officially “dating.”

The love birds would run home after school to text each other on the hippest messaging app of the early 2000s, AIM on their brick-like Macbooks. 

This romance was just another example of two middle schoolers that instantly thought their first interaction with the opposite gender was something more. They only lasted 21 days. They realized dating was stupid.

***

Three years later, Ally and Dale sat next to each other in Mr. Fast’s 10th grade English class at Shawnee Mission East and had become friends again. It was 5th hour — lunch period — so Ally and Dale would race to the cafeteria and buy the three-pack of chocolate chip cookies to split before class started. 

Their friendship slowly grew as they had more and more classes and friends in common. After going together to their junior year homecoming and sweetheart dances as friends, they decided it was time to try again — maybe this time would last more than 21 days. Their first real date was to see the movie “The Haunting in Connecticut” on April 10th.

The 10th — Dale and Ally’s special day. Every month, they’d celebrate their relationship on that day with a fancy dinner, movie or ice cream. They both attended KU, with Dale going to Med School and Ally going to Art School. But no matter how many days they spent at school, or how many days they spent apart, that one day was theirs.

“It forced us to make time for ourselves,” Ally said. 

Soon came May 10th, June, then July and 1,825 days later Dale found himself at the top of the Liberty Memorial on one knee with a ring in his hand as Ally blurted out “I do” on April 10, 2015 — marking exactly five years of dating.

***

The Smith’s are now 30 years old and living in Brookside — Ally working as a Hallmark designer and Dale a Pulmonary Critical Care Fellow doctor at KU Med and still find themselves at East for theater performances to see Ally’s little sister, junior Grace Fields. 

Each time they walk through the Columbia Blue walls, Ally remembers Dale’s corny promposal involving a T-shirt on a mannequin at JCrew, his lack of communication when he ‘ghosted her’ after asking him to WPA because he was sick and herself dancing on the football fields alongside Dale marching in the band. She remembers East as the place where she reconnected with and fell in love with her best friend.

“We got really lucky that we got to grow into people that are so compatible,” Dale said. “Our core personalities are the same but we are so different and we have been through so many things that meeting so early in life allowed us to grow compatible with each other.”

It was 1959, and Mary Kay had just returned to her dorm from classes at Vassar, an all women’s college in Poughkeepsie, New York. Lodged in her mail slot was a letter addressed from Princeton University. It was from Charlie, a boy who also went to Shawnee Mission High, the original Shawnee Mission school located where Shawnee Mission North is today.

“Dear Mary Kay, I understand you have come East for school. Could I bring a couple of roommates up and we could have a date?”

That was it. Charlie and Mary Kay had gone to one dance together in high school, and he simply wanted to know her better since her college wasn’t far from his.

Mary Kay was the salutatorian, or the second ranked student out of her high school graduating class of 870 in 1958. Charlie remembered Mary Kay being “bright”.

Charlie wasn’t much different. As the president of NHS and student congress the two were both well-known for being academically strong at Shawnee Mission. In that time, knowing someone from back home was a pleasure, not many midwestern kids made it to college on the east coast as it was far and expensive. 

“We were a case of two midwesterners gravitating towards each other,” Mary Kay said. “Being on the East coast, they all thought us midwesterners were nothing, just flyovers. They thought we were from an Indian Reservation.”

The first date went well. And so did the second. Soon, Mary Kay Hall was buying a $4.00 ticket headed to Princeton University’s Junction and Back train station every three weeks. 

Charlie and Mary Kay dated throughout college, which meant plenty of train rides, letters and the occasional phone call. The Horners got married on August 18, 1952 — just three months after Mary Kay graduated from Vassar. 

The newlyweds finished their schooling at the University of Michigan to get their graduate degrees, Charlie in the three-year law school and Mary Kay in the two-year music program. The Horners were settled in a rented duplex with rented furniture cradling a newborn baby as they finished up school. Both graduated cum laude. 

***

Charlie and Mary Kay knew nothing more than each others’ names at Prairie Gradeschool, Charlie an eighth grader, and Mary Kay a seventh-grader. They both continued on to Shawnee Mission high school where they got to know each other better. 

On top of her impressive academic achievements, Mary Kay has always been musically inclined. She asked Charlie to be her date to the Botar Ball, where she would perform as a Royalette dancer.  

“I asked him out because I knew his mother would let him wear a tuxedo,” Mary Kay said. “I knew he could dance. I really wanted someone who could dance.”

And dance he could. Charlie and Mary Kay have always been Rock and Roll fans; “Shaboom” by The Chords is their all-time favorite. 

***

Now, Charlie, 81 years old, and Mary Kay, 80, have sent both their kids and grandkids to Shawnee Mission East, giving them the same chance at love that they had. From Prairie Gradeschool to SMHS to the East Coast to Michigan, the Horners have been married for over 50 years and now live in the East district, about a mile away from their childhood homes.