Office of Public Relations
Missouri Baptist University
One College Park Drive
Saint Louis, Missouri 63141-8698
314.392.2307 / fax 314.392.2265
www.mobap.edu / pr@mobap.edu
For Immediate Release
RE: College Sweethearts
College Sweethearts
February 5, 2007
Debbie Brown had her eyes on Missouri Baptist College basketball star Bill Summers, '77, long before he ever knew her name.
"We met my freshman year in college," Debbie said, as she sat next to Bill in their St. Charles, Mo. home on a Thursday night this past October.
"No wait," Bill interrupted. "You knew before I knew you."
"Well, I had seen him around during my senior year of high school. Yeah, I knew who he was," admitted Debbie matter-of-factly as she slapped her husband on the leg. "He was always dating the nursing students at school, though."
Debbie, an education major at MBC, was determined to convert Bill's fancy for nursing students into a thing for a teacher in training.
College has long been a place where lasting love is born. Today, nearly thirty-two years after they met during a chilly, fall day on the quad of what was then Missouri Baptist College, Bill and Debbie Summers have the nostalgic memories--full of butterflies in their stomachs, fall nights on the quad and long-distance love letters--to prove it.
After Debbie's father, Dr. Autrey Brown, accepted a position teaching psychology at MBU, she moved to St. Louis during the summer of 1972 from her home in Fort Collins, Colo. She first noticed Bill while taking a couple of classes at MBU during her senior year in high school. But it was her freshman year at MBU--a year after the young college graduated its first class--when she fell in love.
The year was 1973. Bill, a six-foot, six-inch forward, was the first All-American basketball player to come through the MBU basketball program. Debbie was a freshman homecoming attendant and an outgoing cheerleader.
The two first remember chatting on a cold, autumn afternoon on MBU's quad. The subject of that conversation has faded with the more than three decades that have passed. The intensity ofthe feelings they both felt for each other after their first conversations, however, has not.
After that day, the couple spent hours on the MBU quad that school semester, talking about life and their future. Before too long, those talks on the quad turned into dates. By Christmas, the two were a fairly serious couple.
Soon, they'd be a long-distance couple.
A year after they met, Debbie moved with her family to Southwest Missouri for her dad's job. Bill transferred to a college in Illinois.
Their long-distance relationship proved to be short-lived.
"Too many tickets driving back and forth from there, I guess," Debbie said with a laugh.
Bill transferred back to MBU a semester later and, during her year of college, proposed to Debbie. The two were married on Aug. 23, 1976.
Like most couples, the Summers have overcome struggles and celebrated triumphs during their thirty-one years of marriage. Most of all, however, they attribute the success of their marriage to a renewed commitment in their faith, which they made years after they were married.
"You know, we had stopped going to church and were not active in our walk with Christ," Debbie said. "When we began to have children, we decided we needed to change the way we were living. I believe God has truly blessed our lives."
The Summers have two children; Ryan, 18, and Jason, 22, who is married.
"I think what we're most proud of is watching our children grow to be strong men of Christ," Bill said, who is now the president of a St. Louis-based tool and machinery company.
Life is busy. with work, church, kid's basketball games and a host of other activities, reminiscing about years gone by doesn't happen very often, the couple admitted. But all too infrequently, the Summers will take a minute or two to reflect on when it all began back in 1973 on the MBU quad.
"He'd shave his head once a year right before basketball season," Debbie said, as she pointed to a picture of her husband in the 1974 MBU Peloponnesian, the College's yearbook. "Oh, and those short basketball shorts. I'll never forget watching him wear those."
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Missouri Baptist University is a premier Christian university in Saint Louis, offering graduate and undergraduate studies in over thirty specialized fields and nine degrees. MBU's education and fine arts programs are nationally known in addition to business, religion, administration of justice, and more. MBU is one of the fastest growing higher education institutions in Missouri with an enrollment of over 4,500 students at five locations in the bi-state region — West County, Lincoln County, Jefferson County, Franklin County and the new Illinois extension at Lewis and Clark Community College.
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