How we met, a love story - Part 1

W
ith Valentine’s day this week, we at the News Letter want to profile a few local couples and how they met. Part one of this three-part series will focus on Tom and Susanne Voss. Not only is this story funny and charming, having it told to me from two different points of view provides a lot of color and details that, otherwise, I might not have received.
In 1982, Tom was a manager at the Fountain Inn. There was a club with a disco feel, the Galaxy room. While Tom and Susanne knew who each other was, it was during one of Susanne’s visits to the Galaxy that Tom, as he puts it, “took notice of her.”
He knew that Susanne worked at a lady’s store, Jones, and this night he thought she was at the club without a date. Susanne claims otherwise. But the notice that Tom was giving her was unmistakable. At first, this made Susanne a bit uncomfortable, wondering what was wrong with this guy who couldn’t even see that she was with someone else. 
A few weeks later, she was upstairs in the restaurant with her mother, Betty “Bunny” Shurley. Shurley had been Tom’s eighth grade teacher. In fact, his parents were friends with Susanne’s parents. During his eighth grade year, he saw a picture of Shurley’s baby Susanne.
“Who would have guessed I would end up marrying that little baby,” Tom said.
Now, in the restaurant, he was again struck by how beautiful she was. She had grown to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and he started to make plans concerning her. So first he went up to her.
“Are you married?” Tom asked her. She said no to his question. And that did it for Tom. He was bound and determined to woo this beautiful woman, and his assault quickly developed into action.
Tom was also a wildcatter, owner of Thunder Basin Oil Lands, Inc. There he was putting together drilling projects for the Mush Creek oil field. The company contracted with Plains Engineering, where Susanne worked as an office manager and secretary. Tom decided to use any excuse to visit the Plains office because she was the first person he would see upon entering. As you can probably guess, he wasn’t going there only to conduct business.
“She was already the most beautiful thing I ever laid eyes on,” Tom said, “And she just kept getting prettier.”
But there was a problem. The men who worked at Plains Engineering were already protective of Susanne, and they weren’t about to let this “bad boy” do her any wrong. According to Susanne, he already had a reputation as a lady’s man, and his advances were not the most welcome. 
Susanne laughed.
“Tom was a very bad boy,” she said.
But he was also persistent and braved the men she worked with to ask her out, and it happened a few times, Susanne recalls, but she kept figuring out ways to ditch him.
She recalled that when she was in her mother’s class years before, Tom did a one-man show for the students. He was dressed in an all-white suit, had white hair and a mustache, and for a prop, he held a cigar. He portrayed Mark Twain. His voice, his mannerisms, everything was a sight to behold.
“He blew my socks off,” Susanne said, “I mean, he was unrecognizable.” 
Years later, the guts he showed would impress her again.
The same bravery was on display as Tom, undeterred by her refusals and the protective men surrounding her, kept asking her to go out with him. One day, as he entered her office, he took off his sunglasses.
“He had the most incredible eyes,” she recalled fondly. “They took my breath away.” 
Sometime later, he also showed his confidence in a big way.
“You have been nominated Miss Thunder Basin Oil, Inc., of 1982,” Tom burst out with a loud voice, “And you have won an all-expense-paid trip to Mush Creek oil field with me!”
“Tom knew those boys were there to protect me,” Susanne said, “He knew they had been making discouraging remarks about him. But he did that anyway. That was brave to me, and it caught my attention.” 
So she agreed to go out with him. 
But she also informed him that she had to be back by 6:30 to see some male strippers at Lamplighter Bar. She had already made those plans, but it was also a convenient way to get out of a protracted date. But what she did not count on was what she discovered about Tom during that time.
“He was congenial and mannerly,” she said, “He wasn’t the monster I thought he was. And I found we had a lot in common.” 
She also agreed to a second date.
This time the date was a picnic. Susanne remembers that it was a perfect day, and Tom had prepared a great spread. After they had eaten, she dozed off. When she woke up, Tom was walking back to the picnic site, holding a bunch of wild irises and singing “Liza Lee.”
“It was the most romantic thing I’d ever seen,” Susanne said.
In 1984, while on a date to Roughlock Falls, which was packed with tourists and people they knew from town, Tom put one leg over the rail right above the deepest part of the pool at the base of the falls.
“Susanne Shurley,” Tom yelled, “Marry me, or I’ll jump!” 
Susanne remembers seeing all eyes turned toward her, expectantly. But she also knew Tom was grandstanding. A bit embarrassed, she turned and walked away. But these self-abasing moments of bravery, where the unexpected would come out of Tom, and the beautiful tenderness he possessed in so many other ways had done the job Tom had intended from the beginning. And four years after they started dating they were married, on Aug. 8, 1986.