Before He Wakes (5 page)

Barbara received her dorm assignment and the name and address of her roommate several weeks before she left for Boone. Her roommate was to be Laura Campbell, an English major. She and Laura corresponded several times before they arrived on campus, planning who would bring what for their room.

They were to discover that they had much in common. Both were from families of modest means. Both had been brought up Baptist. Both were quiet and studious, serious about getting an education. Neither was a drinker or partygoer. Both were neat, good housekeepers, although Barbara was by far the more meticulous of the two. Both were early risers and usually were in bed by ten.

In some ways, though, they were very different. Laura, who was from a small mountain town near Asheville, was tall and strikingly beautiful. In August she had won the title of Miss Asheville and would be competing the following summer in the Miss North Carolina pageant. Next to her, Barbara seemed even shorter and plainer than she thought herself to be. Laura sensed an insecurity in Barbara about her looks, but that didn’t interfere with their relationship. They struck up a quick friendship. “Like two little sisters together in this big place,” Laura would recall years later.

Appalachian, which was in the process of becoming a university that year, enforced strict regulations, especially for female students, who were not allowed to wear shorts or slacks on campus or to be outside their dorm rooms after ten o’clock on weeknights. Closed study was required for two hours every night. Barbara and Laura found themselves together a lot and enjoyed each other’s company. They chatted about school and classes, and Barbara talked a lot about her family, delighting in relating stories about her little brother Stevie. She talked often as well about Alton, with whom she corresponded regularly. She rarely mentioned her father but spoke proudly of her mother. Laura got the impression that her mother was the guiding force in her life.

Mostly, though, the two talked about “girl stuff,” as Laura termed it. Boys were at the top of the list, but hairdos, makeup and clothing also were regular topics. Barbara asked for tips about improving her appearance, and Laura trimmed Barbara’s pageboy cut to a shorter, more flattering style, which Barbara would tint blond later in the year.

Early that fall, Laura met Steve Hamrick, a sophomore, an education major from Lexington, and they soon began dating. Steve’s roommate was a close friend named Larry Ford. Larry often ate in the campus cafeteria with Steve and Laura and two other friends, forming a comfortable group. Laura was impressed with Larry, whom she thought to be smart, level-headed, sincere, a really nice person who knew where he was going. “He was like a big brother you could just sit down and talk to,” she recalled.

Larry, she knew, wasn’t dating anybody, and neither was Barbara. In the first weeks of school Barbara went home every weekend, and after returning from one of those trips, she had told Laura that she had broken up with her boyfriend. Laura thought that Larry and Barbara might hit it off, and she invited Barbara to join their group for lunch one day.

Barbara didn’t say much about Larry afterward, but she did continue joining their group for activities. It wasn’t until Laura saw Larry and Barbara talking quietly in the student union one day that she thought something might happen between them. By winter, Barbara and Larry, who never had dated anyone steadily, were being thought of as another campus couple.

Larry had grown up in rented houses in the rolling countryside near the community of Colfax in Guilford County west of Greensboro, about sixty-five miles from Durham. His parents, Doris and Henry Ford, had known each other from childhood in the small textile-mill town of Randleman in Randolph County, where Larry was born. The first of their five children, he was quiet, thoughtful, always helpful to his parents and his sisters and brothers. “He was a gentle child from the beginning,” his mother recalled years later. Teachers’ remarks on his report cards throughout his first years at Colfax School were the kind to make parents proud: “very polite,” “works well with others,” “an outstanding student.”

The Fords had attended a Friends church in Randleman in the early years of their marriage, but there were no Quaker churches in Colfax, so they joined Shady Grove Wesleyan Methodist, the center of community activity. Larry went to Sunday school there as well as regular services and took part in the youth activities. He joined Boy Scout Post 370 at the church and eventually achieved Eagle rank.

As a teenager, Larry caused his parents no worries, even after he got his driver’s license. “He drove just like an old man from day one,” his father said, “just as stable. He was just that kind of person.”

Although he liked sports and was a member of the track team, Larry was more gifted in the classroom. Not only did he excel academically, he also became a school leader, president of the Beta Club, treasurer of the Inner Club Council, secretary of the Junior Civitans. During his senior year—the year his family moved into a hillside two-story farmhouse on eighty partially wooded acres along Cross Creek, nearer the center of Colfax—Larry and Linda Pope were chosen most dependable in their classes.

Larry decided that he wanted to teach, and the Fords began rearranging their lives so they could afford to send him and their other children to college. Henry quit driving a delivery truck for Holsum Bakery in Winston-Salem to take a higher-paying job at Guilford Dairy in Greensboro; Doris went to work at Belk’s, a department store in downtown Greensboro, riding the bus back and forth every day. Larry also got a full-time summer job at Guilford Dairy to earn money for college.

He wanted to go to North Carolina State in Raleigh, but he also applied to Appalachian State Teachers College in Boone. Appalachian was quick to accept him, and after several weeks passed without hearing from State, Larry sent off a deposit to Appalachian. Later an acceptance arrived from State, but Larry already had committed, and he stuck by his fateful choice.

Larry liked Appalachian and especially the Blue Ridge Mountains in which it was situated. On visits, his family would accompany him on outings along the Blue Ridge Parkway and hiking trips on nearby trails. Larry did well in his first year of college, attaining high grades and the plaudits of his instructors. He spent long hours studying and had little time for dating or other outside activities. His parents never worried about Larry, confident that with his likeable and easy-going nature, his intelligence, dependability and willingness to work hard, his future was bright. They had no foreboding that his sophomore year would bring forces into his life that would end in tragedy.

Laura could not have imagined that Barbara and Larry would become involved in a sexual relationship. Baptist girls just didn’t do that. But years later Barbara would tell a friend that she had wasted little time with Larry, having sex with him the first time they were alone together—in the instruments closet of the campus band room. Her eagerness, her almost desperate hunger for affection and approval, though, produced only a cautious wariness in Larry.

He made no mention of a girlfriend in letters and visits home that winter, and even Laura got the feeling that he wanted to back away from Barbara, that she was pushing him too hard and too fast. That was confirmed for her after an incident on a snowy Saturday night in February.

Barbara returned to the dorm room that night in a state that Laura could only describe later as “bizarre.”

“Barbara, are you all right?” Laura asked.

Only guttural sounds came, “almost animal-type.”

“What’s wrong?” Laura asked, but she got no response other than the strange noises.

Barbara slumped on the edge of her bed, her hair in her face, her head shaking, moaning eerily—“almost like a cry inside that wasn’t coming out,” according to Laura, who hurried to the room next door for help when she couldn’t get Barbara to tell her what had happened. Dormmates were of no assistance in snapping Barbara out of her spell, and the dorm mother was summoned. When she, too, was unable to get a response, she called the campus police, who took Barbara to the hospital in a security car. Laura went along to be of help if she could.

“I have never seen anything like it,” she said. “I felt like I needed to be there if she wanted to talk.”

Barbara did not want to talk. Doctors sedated her and kept her at the hospital overnight.

Laura called Barbara’s parents to tell them she was in the hospital. “They really didn’t say a lot,” she said. “I was surprised.”

Barbara was okay the next day but subdued when Larry and Steve went to the hospital in a station wagon they borrowed from a friend to take her back to the dorm. Barbara never talked about the incident, and within a couple of days she seemed normal again. Only later did Steve tell Laura that Barbara’s bizarre behavior had been precipitated by Larry telling her that he wanted to break off their relationship. But by then Barbara and Larry were back together. They had resumed the relationship the day Barbara got out of the hospital.

Barbara’s parents did not come to check on her, and Laura could not help but wonder if that was because they had seen Barbara display this type of behavior before. Was Barbara’s episode a genuine breakdown in the face of stress, a dark secret the family did not want to acknowledge? Or was it just a device Barbara used to get her own way when things did not please her, something the family knew would quickly pass as soon as it had achieved its purpose?

Doris Ford was surprised in early May when she looked out the window of her farmhouse and saw Larry driving up unannounced in a car he had borrowed from a friend. Something must be wrong, she thought, and she knew that she was right as soon as she saw his worried face.

Larry kept most problems to himself, but when he was so deeply troubled that he had to talk to somebody, he always turned to his mother.

Doris and her son went upstairs to his old room and sat on the bed. Larry was nervous and ashamed, and it was hard for him to tell his mother what he had to say. He’d met a girl. Her name was Barbara Terry. They had been going together for several months. There was a pause. The next words seemed not to want to come. She had … become pregnant. She was about two months along now. She had told him that he didn’t have to marry her, but he wanted to do the right thing.

Doris reached out and touched her son’s hand. For long moments there was silence.

“Do you love her?” Doris asked.

“Yes,” he said without hesitation.

What about college? she asked him. She knew how much he wanted his degree. He would try to go on and finish, he said. Barbara had agreed to that. They both knew it wouldn’t be easy. They would get by the best they could.

“Well,” Doris said after another long pause, “if you love her, then you should marry her.”

Barbara had become pregnant only a couple of weeks after Larry had tried to break off their relationship, but if he thought that she had allowed herself to get pregnant to entrap him, he never mentioned it. Larry’s father had that feeling, though, and soon afterward Larry told him, “Dad, I wish you had told me about women like that.” It was too late for him to say anything now, Henry knew, for Larry had accepted his responsibility and was facing up to it with stout resolve.

The wedding was not announced. Their parents would not learn about it until later. It was held on May 21, 1968, at First Presbyterian Church in Boone, near the campus. Laura and Steve were among the small group of friends quickly assembled for the informal ceremony.

Larry had confided in Steve about Barbara’s pregnancy, but Laura didn’t know. Barbara never mentioned it, and Steve didn’t tell her until later. Laura suspected it, though, because of the suddenness of the whole affair and the lack of joy in it. Barbara was very determined about it. Larry seemed subdued, almost reluctant. Something had to be wrong, Laura knew, because Barbara’s grades had been dropping that spring, and she had taken to skipping classes.

Only a week of classes remained when Larry and Barbara were married, and both remained in their dorm rooms afterward. But Barbara stopped going to classes altogether. She was going to drop out of college and get a job, she told Laura, stirring her concern. Laura had thought that Barbara really wanted to get an education and become a teacher. She hoped that she wasn’t messing up her life.

Larry and Barbara drove to Colfax soon after the wedding, Larry again driving a borrowed car, to tell his family about the marriage. Although they had never met their new daughter-in-law, the Fords went out of their way to make her feel welcome and part of their family. Still, the situation was strained. Barbara was anxious and didn’t talk much. And the Fords thought that she was too openly affectionate with Larry. When she started kissing him passionately in front of them, they were shocked.

“I never had seen anything in my life that came close to that,” Doris later recalled. Did Barbara have no modesty or sense of proper behavior? Or was she showing her new in-laws that she would do whatever she wished?

Doris wanted to like her new daughter-in-law. She always gave everybody the benefit of the doubt, but there was something about Barbara that bothered her, although she couldn’t put a finger on it. “You know, you get a feeling sometimes when you meet people,” she said years later. “You’re going to keep both eyes open.”

That feeling soon would be confirmed for Doris. In becoming pregnant, marrying Larry and dropping out of college, acts that seemed calculated to bring grievous disappointment to her mother, Barbara had broken sharply with the strictures of her past. Now that she was out on her own, she would do exactly as she pleased.