Left Field Love
May 18, 2024 | Baseball, Joel Coleman
Fifty years since their first date, Dr. David and Lynne Curtis celebrated at Dudy Noble.
STARKVILLE – It's been said that diamonds are forever. That certainly has proven to be the case for Dr. David and Lynne Curtis.
On Saturday, as Mississippi State hosted Missouri in its regular season finale, the Curtises, along with numerous family members and friends, enjoyed the action from the rooftop of the Left Field Lofts. And what was the reason for the gathering? Fifty years prior, David and Lynne's very first date had occurred just below where they took in Saturday's game.
For the two, it was the perfect spot to celebrate five decades of life together that began with a simple question from David to Lynne back during State's 1974 season.
"I said, 'Hey, would you like to ride over and go to a ballgame with me?'" David recalled.
The two were both student teachers in nearby New Hope at the time. Lynne was finishing up her degree from the Mississippi University for Women in Columbus but was part of a family full of MSU graduates. David was completing his own education at State before eventually heading to optometry school.
It wasn't exactly love at first sight or anything.
Lynne confesses two of her biggest memories from that first date: "The full moon, and I wasn't interested."
But, she was interested enough to tell David she'd go, and that's what he says he remembers the most from the evening.
"And she even liked me after she hung around my friends," David said.
Likely no one could've predicted it was all the start of a special life together when David drove the two to the ballfield in Starkville in his Ford Pinto, parked behind the left-field fence, rolled down the windows, turned on the radio and threw a blanket down. The rest became a beautiful, lovely history that was celebrated on Saturday afternoon.
Like that first date so long ago, Saturday's festivities were David's idea, too.
"We were sitting behind home plate at a game last year and my wife mentioned that our daughter and son wanted to know what we were going to do for our 50th wedding anniversary, which is next year," David said. "I was thinking, 'Well, you'd have to make folks come to a fellowship hall of a church on a Sunday afternoon when they could be golfing or going to a ballgame or doing something else, but they'd feel obligated to come.' I've been in those shoes and didn't want to have all that."
So, instead, it was a party at the spot of that initial date. It's an area of Dudy Noble David and Lynne don't typically return to these days.
"We're too old to hang in left field anymore," David said.
But at least for a day, the Curtises were able to turn back the clock.
