Thursday, October 26, 2000

Couple goes back to school to wed
By Bill Whitaker

They say you can’t go back again, but Roy Fernandez and Delma Carreon sure did — and it was enough for them to each utter an everlasting “I do.”

If you were motoring down North 12th past Franklin Middle School the other day, you might have seen the pair, along with scores of family and friends, during the couple’s wedding on the schoolhouse steps.

That’s where their romance budded.

It sure took a long time to blossom, though.

“I was really happy the people at Franklin let us do this,” Fernandez, a 25-year-old bug exterminator, told me moments before the afternoon wedding. “We got a hold of some of the teachers who were here when we were and they were just amazed.

“They all said, ‘Aren’t you two married yet?’”

Actually, no, though their 14-year courtship lasted longer than many marriages do these days. In fact, the only time they split up was when Carreon, one grade level ahead of Fernandez, went off to Abilene High while he stayed behind at Franklin.

“But it was just that one year,” Fernandez insisted. “Once I got to Abilene High, we got back together, and it’s been that way ever since.”

Carreon isn’t exactly a blushing bride, but she certainly comes close when admitting how long their courtship lasted.

“We just wanted to be sure,” she explained after the wedding. “But I guess we were pretty sure after the first 10 years!”

Even so, Fernandez had to talk Carreon into the idea of mounting their wedding out in front of Franklin Middle School, an idea she initially branded “corny.”

If love is about sacrifices, she definitely did her part.

The couple has yet to go on a honeymoon, but Fernandez vows it won’t take another 14 years.

Educators might have been surprised the pair wasn’t married yet, but they were thrilled to allow the wedding to take place right beneath a weathered mascot symbolizing the Franklin Broncos. Justice of the Peace A.L. Deatherage presided, though the couple had another Justice as well — their 4-year-old daughter.

Romance can begin strangely, especially in middle school. Carreon says she took a fancy to Fernandez one morning almost a decade and a half ago. He happened to be tying his shoe on campus.

She admits he was pretty hard to miss that day.

“He had a pink shirt and red suspenders,” she recalled. “I just thought he was so cute.”

Although the wedding went off nicely, it didn’t go without a hitch. The outdoor ceremony began late because, during preparations at a family home, 5-year-old ring-bearer Tyler Fernandez, Roy’s nephew, got himself locked in the bathroom.

In all the haste, the wedding party forgot about the little fellow — out of sight, out of mind — and almost caravaned off to the wedding without him.

No wonder the bride nervously remarked after the wedding: “I just wanted all this to be over with!”

For his part, best man Joe Herrera shook his head at what he clearly viewed as a lot of ceremonial silliness.

“We do our own thing,” the lifelong bachelor sighed, looking at his longtime buddy, about to mount the schoolhouse altar. “If he wants to be with just one woman — well, that’s OK with me.”

Contact associate editor Bill Whitaker at 676-6732 or whitakerb@abinews.com. Check out Bill’s previous columns at www.brazosbill.com.