Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 25, 1993 TAG: 9303250424
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MILLIE WILLIS SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ENGAGEMENT PICTURE GETS LOTS OF LAUGHS
In 1986, Anne-Paige Thomas was voted Most Playful Senior in the Senior Mirror at Patrick Henry High School.She is still living up to that title. Thomas, a social worker with Cath olic Charities in Palm Beach, Fla., recently announced her engagement to Kenneth Stuhr Jr., owner and operator of Sequoia Lawn & Pest Control of Palm Beach.
But the photo of the couple that appeared in the Feb. 28 edition of the Roanoke Times & World-News was not your traditional engagement picture.
It was an eye-catcher. The Thomas-Stuhr picture portrayed a young lady expressing shock and horror and a sobbing young man wiping away his tears.
During a telephone interview from her Palm Beach home, Thomas had a simple explanation: "Mother asked for a formal photo. It was Ken's idea to do something different."
" `Let's make faces,' he said," the future bride and former model recalled.
"I thought it sounded like fun. We came up with trying to express the feeling: `I can't believe I'm doing this!' "
Thomas, 25, and her future husband "feel like there's a lot of pain and sadness in the world, but we still need to laugh and not lose our sense of humor. And too, engagement time should be a fun time," she said.
At first, her parents, Fred and Kitty Thomas of Roanoke, hesitated about submitting the picture to the newspaper.
"Paige said they were sending a formal photo," Kitty Thomas recalled, but "when I received the picture, I couldn't believe my eyes. You just never know what Paige is going to come up with next. It was a hard decision to make."
The Thomases enjoy playing jokes on each other. Last spring when Thomas brought her fiance home to meet her family, Kitty Thomas, a nurse, conjured up an unusual greeting.
When the young couple arrived at the Roanoke airport, they were greeted by a noisy, seedy-looking group of odd-appearing characters, dressed as southern Bubbas and hillbillies. Kitty Thomas wore a platinum wig and black motorcycle shirt, and her husband wore a striped umpire shirt and pants with an Atlanta Braves cap and Tomahawk. Their son, Chip, wore bib overalls and cap, and a family friend, Mae Moore, was dressed as Statue of Liberty and carried a life-sized cardboard figure of George Bush. Another friend, Wes Martin, wore a suit with wide-brim hat and dark glasses, and Wes' brother, Andrew Martin, wore his graduation gown and dark glasses.
Thomas remembers telling Stuhr before landing that she thought the airport lobby would be almost empty. But when they landed, they heard unruly sounds from a strange-looking crowd.
"When I realized it was my family and friends, I was so embarrassed, at first. Then I couldn't stop laughing; they are so funny! Of course, Ken thought it was a big joke. He loved it," Thomas said.
She and Stuhr will be married Sept. 4 in Roanoke, and she promises "the church ceremony will be traditional. But the reception will surely be fun . . . "