THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610020048
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY WENDY GROSSMAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 141 lines
SITTING BEHIND the Norfolk Tides' dugout Aug. 29, Debbie Palange looked up at the scoreboard at the end of the third inning and saw her name flashing in red lights.
``Will you marry me?'' the sign read.
She turned around and her boyfriend, John Rouleau, was holding a band of three diamond solitaires and a dozen red roses.
Palagne, a nurse, cried and gave him a big hug before breaking out a bottle of champagne he'd snuck in. For the rest of the game, fans kept buying them beers.
Engagements date back to the caveman. Nowadays guys don't beat women over the head - but not too many are getting down on bended knee. Or making the big pitch like Rouleau.
The typical proposal these days is dinner out and then the guy presents the ring during dessert. Lynn Procter of Virginia Beach says that's ordinary, uromantic. Boring.
It's been done.
When Procter, an office manager and now a freelance wedding consultant, got home from work one October afternoon in 1992, the blinds on the sliding glass door were rustling. She thought it was the wind.
``Out from the blinds prances a little tiny orange kitten,'' Procter says. ``I picked her up and she had a red ribbon around her neck and there was a diamond ring dangling from the ribbon. I got a double whammy surprise all at once.''
Especially since her boyfriend hated cats and had told her that if they ever got married he'd never allow a cat in his house.
``He never did say, `Will you marry me?' '' she says. ``It was pretty much a given when I got the cat.''
Now they've got three cats.
Not all proposals take that much planning or involve the ASPCA.
Forty-three-year-old Nancy Zedd and her boyfriend were driving around Norfolk and saw a house for rent they liked. So they decided to get married.
Jackie Butler came home from her friend's wedding and called her boyfriend who was down in South Carolina.
``Well, then I guess you can set a date,'' he said.
``A date for what?'' she asked.
``To get married.''
While some guys still pop the question on holidays like Valentine's Day or Christmas, how many guys propose on Flag Day?
Tonya Newcomb, 24, was giving her dog a bath in the backyard June 14 three years ago.
``You dropped something,'' her boyfriend said, coming up behind her.
She looked down and in the wet grass was the antique white gold ring they'd picked out weeks before at a consignment shop. She ran right inside and called her mom.
Egyptian Pharaohs were the first to use engagement rings. Early rings were made of iron - gold wasn't introduced until the second century B.C.
Dona Anderson, jeweler and part owner of Ali Baba Inc. in Norfolk, sells four or five engagement rings per week. Square, emerald, pear, hearts or marquise cut diamonds catch the light of her store.
``It's a big part of our business,'' she says. ``They're the rings people spend the most money on.''
One-quarter-carat rings start off at $425, but she sold one ring for $10,000.
Once the rock's selected, how to give it to the beloved is the next question.
``A lot of guys are really clueless about how to present the ring,'' says Scott Twine, a waiter at Steinhilber's Thalia Acres Inn in Virginia Beach.
Twine helps out with about five engagements a year. He places the ring on top of the woman's dessert, ties it onto the cherry stem on her drink, or drops it in the bottom of her champagne flute.
So far no one's ever choked on a ring.
But some have strangled on the proposal.
Twine spent more than two hours consulting one guy on his proposal. They decided to put the ring in a red balloon and ask her to pop it.
Everything was set. The couple came in on Friday night and had a few drinks. But after the appetizers the man disappeared.
Twenty minutes later Twine found him pacing in the restroom sweating bullets and repeating that he didn't know if he could go through with it.
``He was in the bathroom pale as a sheet spilling his guts to me for fifteen minutes,'' Twine says chuckling. ``He finally got his wits together.''
Twine brought out a birthday cake and the guy asked his fiancee-to-be to pop the balloon.
``The ring flew about 15 feet from the table and landed under another,'' Twine says. ``I had to go and crawl under and get it.''
He's not the only guy to get jittery. Twenty-one-year-old Nicole Cummings' boyfriend was so nervous ``his hands were shaking so much it was hard to see the ring,'' she says, laughing.
At least he said it.
Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim couldn't.
Apparently, Fraim, who had just run for city council at the time, was more nervous about running for husband.
``He couldn't get the words out, so he wrote it on my birthday card,'' says his wife, Beth.
He handed her the card on the beach. But she didn't mind. They'd been dating for five years.
``I was ready to get it any way I could,'' she says.
As Jay Richardson, who works for the Tides, walked along Chick's Beach, he was so afraid that the ring was going to fall out of his pocket and be lost in the sand that he forgot to kneel down, he says.
Richardson wasn't nervous about the proposal - he'd been dating his fiancee-to-be for eight years. He was pretty sure she'd say yes.
Eva Cline's husband didn't have that luxury.
``He asked me about 30 times - no joke,'' Cline says. ``Marry me? Please? Let's get married. . . . ''
They've been wed five years now.
Mike Layman, 31, kept telling his fiancee-to-be that he wasn't ready.
He needed another six months. Or a year.
Then one day he took his girlfriend to The Trellis in Williamsburg. After dinner the waiter brought out a dozen roses and Layman got down onto his knee.
``She didn't believe me,'' he says. ``She thought it was a bubble-gum ring.''
Annette Holmes, 70, still remembers doubting her boyfriend's proposal nearly 50 years ago.
They were sitting in front of the Robert E. Lee Hotel in Lexington the night before he graduated from VMI and he turned to her and said, ``I think it'd be a good idea if you and I were married.''
``You're drunk - tell me again tomorrow,'' she said.
He woke up with a hangover and a fiancee, she says.
Whether they scratch ``marry me'' in the sand, pop a ring in a box of Chicken McNuggets or tie it to a teddy bear, folks are still getting together.
Dave Wallace of Virginia Beach took his girlfriend to Busch Gardens. Holding hands at the top of the Big Bad Wolf roller coaster, he asked her to tie the knot.
She screamed ``Yes!'' all the way down. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
JIM WALKER/The Virginian-Pilot
At Old Dominion University's graduation ceremonies this year, Carl
Hooks used banners - and friends - to propose to Angie Myers. She
accepted.
Drawings
JOHN EARLE/The Virginian-Pilot
Egyptian Pharaohs were the first to use engagement rings. Early
rings were made of iron - gold wasn't introduced until the second
century B.C. by CNB