THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 23, 1995 TAG: 9505240037
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 165 lines
IT'S FUNNY what you remember after you meet someone. Randy Holland remembers thunder and lightning.
It wasn't love, not right then, but a storm that was rolling through Suffolk when Holland called Rhonda Peebles that first time. They were 12 years old. She went to another school in town, and mutual friends had urged him to phone her.
Peebles remembers the call, too: ``He asked me to describe myself over the phone.'' To her surprise, she did.
Not long afterward, Rhonda L. Peebles and Randolph D. Holland Jr. met face-to-face. The youngsters soon became fast friends, in a junior-high, best-buddy, talking-a-lot-on-the-phone sense.
As they got older, they fixed up one another with friends for dates. They didn't start going out with each other until halfway through their senior year in high school. Holland's friends for years had kidded him about his platonic friendship with Peebles, urging him to ``partner up'' with her.
They went together to their prom, she in a black-and-white gown, he in a white tux. Their classmates voted them ``cutest couple.''
``So, I guess they knew,'' Peebles says. ``Because we weren't even `dating' then. We were just friends.''
This is a story about friends.
That's because, even though they're 25 now, have been dating for seven years, have been engaged for 18 months and are getting married in little more than four weeks, Peebles and Holland still see themselves first as friends.
So do people who know them. This friendship is the main reason they say that, despite the country's dreary marriage statistics, this wedding will stick.
Peebles and Holland say they're ready. They're young, but they're established in the working world. She's a registered nurse; he's an assembly-line worker and auto mechanic. They've known each other a long time. Most importantly, they're friends, and they talk. About anything and everything.
This is the first marriage for each of them, and both plan on it being their only one.
So this also is a story about hope.
Hope'' isn't the first word that's likely to occur to you if you check out the marriage numbers.
There were 2.3 million marriages in the United States in 1993, the most-recent figure available from the National Center for Health Statistics, which keeps track of such things for the government. There also were 1.2 million divorces that year. In Virginia, there were 68,411 marriages and 29,463 divorces.
That doesn't mean that more than half of all marriages in the United States and 43 percent in Virginia crash and burn. The divorces counted that year could have ended marriages that began 10, 20 or 40 years earlier, not just ones that took place the same year.
Still, a 1992 Census Bureau study projected that four out of 10 first marriages end in divorce. Another study showed that in about 45 percent of today's weddings, one or both of those getting married have been married before.
Trend-wise, the divorce rate has remained stable since about 1988, after peaking in the late 1970s and declining slightly in the mid-1980s, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. But marriage rates, which often are cyclical, have dropped since 1990. So the rate of divorces may not be going up, but the rate of marriages is going down.
People are waiting longer to marry - or not bothering to marry at all.
Peebles and Holland don't care. They're finished waiting.
They figured they'd probably break up after graduating in 1988 from the former Yeats High School, where Peebles had been freshman homecoming queen, flag-team captain and student-government president, and Holland had played football and ridden motorcycles until injuries ended both pursuits. She headed off to Virginia State University in Petersburg to prepare for a career in nursing, like her grandmother. He enrolled at Norfolk State University, majoring in industrial education. Everyone said that long-distance romances don't work.
But Peebles and Holland were surprised at how much they missed each other. Daily phone calls resulted in $200 monthly bills. They wrote to each other several times a week.
``I rode up there every weekend, too,'' Holland says. ``I found out I didn't like anybody else but her. I really wasn't interested in anybody else. I thought that I would be.''
Four years of college started sounding awfully long to Peebles. After a semester, she transferred to Norfolk State, where there was a two-year associate's degree program to become a registered nurse. That Christmas, Holland offered her a ring, but she turned down his proposal.
``I wasn't ready,'' she says. ``I wanted to finish school. We weren't stable. We had just started dating.''
``You see, I thought it was a joke,'' she adds with a laugh. ``Then I was, `You know, he's not playing.' ''
Holland took the rejection in stride.
``I realized we weren't really ready,'' he says. ``A lot of people who rush to get married have financial problems later. They watch the kids come up. There'd be a lot of stress.''
So they kept dating. Going out to eat. Roller-skating. Bowling. Playing pool. Going to the beach, Busch Gardens, King's Dominion, to visit relatives in Richmond. Shopping.
And talking. In person and on the phone. About what happened to them that day. About their dreams and goals. About nothing.
``A lot of females have a tendency to talk to their girlfriends first and then talk to their mates,'' says Pharnethia L. Goodman, who shares Peebles' Virginia Beach apartment, ``but she tells him everything.''
``I'd tell him things I wouldn't tell a girlfriend,'' Peebles says.
They talked about buying their first house, about having their first child. In fact, they talked their way to a compromise on children - she didn't want any at first, while he wanted two. Now they've agreed on having one, if possible. They're practicing being parents with Holland's dog, Rocky.
By Christmas 1993, Peebles had finished her classes, and Holland was working. This time, surprised and weeping, she accepted his ring when he proposed again. She had expected just a sorority sweater.
Still, they didn't set a wedding date until she passed her nursing boards and became licensed. First things first.
After that, Holland says, ``we felt we were as ready as we'd ever be.''
He liked how they wanted many of the same things in life. She liked his playfulness and that he didn't criticize her ideas.
They smile easily and joke knowingly with each other while sitting on a couch in Peebles' neat, modernly furnished Virginia Beach apartment. The know that, increasingly, American society doesn't view marriage as a till-death-do-us-part agreement.
As many friends warn them against marriage as support their decision. Divorces are easier to come by, and little social stigma remains for those who live together unmarried and raise children.
But social critics increasingly complain that Americans' relaxed attitude toward marriage has hurt family life and, particularly, children. Holland agrees.
``A lot of people who live together don't stay together long,'' he says. ``I guess they figure it's easy to get out of.''
Holland and Peebles take marriage seriously.
``I believe it's all what you make of it,'' Peebles says. ``It's both of you working, not just one of you. . . . Oh yes, it's a lot of giving and taking.''
``We work together well,'' Holland says. ``We agree pretty much. We don't argue and all. We'd rather talk it out than argue. And we're friends first.''
There are those two things again: talk and friends.
``They'll be all right,'' says Peebles' father, Henry L. Peebles, a Suffolk mortician. ``They've been friends a long time.''
``You see one, you see the other,'' says Goodman, Peebles' roommate. ``They talk a lot.
``All of us have broken up. They're still going on. . . . I think a lot of people don't take the time to know each other.''
One thing Peebles and Holland sometimes discuss is why friends' relationships didn't work. They hope to head off the same problems with theirs.
``When you marry, the lines of communication have to be open all the time,'' Peebles says. ``Sometimes your girlfriends won't be there for you to talk to. But your mate always has to be there.
``If you can't talk to someone, what's the use of being with someone? You might as well be talking to a brick wall.''
Most of their friends still date, still looking for that right someone. But most are scared, too.
``No one can say good things about getting married,'' says Goodman, the roommate. ``I think a lot of people are afraid to get married. A lot of young people. Because they're afraid it won't work out.
``I'm scared, and I'm 26. It's a scary thing to get married.''
Not to Peebles and Holland.
``If I had any doubt,'' Holland says, ``I wouldn't do it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/Staff
Rhonda Peebles and Randy Holland, who will be exchanging vows in
four weeks, see themselves first as friends.
by CNB