The Gatlings
After initial reluctance, romance blossoms for Carlton and Charlotte
The best Valentine’s Day gift that Charlotte Gatling ever gave to her husband Carlton was herself. “Being single for 39 years, it’s nice to spend Valentine’s Day with someone you love,” said Carlton, a trades technician for Moving and Special Events.

Although they met the first day that Charlotte Ferebee started working at Old Dominion in 1996, it wasn’t until two years later that they went out on their first date. And if it weren’t for the persistence of a few colleagues, they may never have been matched up at all.

“Carlton was one of the very first people I met on campus when he came into Human Resources to meet with Martha Lacey while I was working there,” said Charlotte, who now works as a program specialist for Upward Bound. “She kept saying, ‘You should call him, he’s a good guy,’ but I thought he was too old for me.”

When Charlotte and Carlton landed in a Human Resources Department-sponsored finance training class together almost two years later, they were both too nervous to approach one another. “A friend of mine called me and told me that she was interested and for me to give her a call,” said Carlton. When he eventually called her that Thanksgiving eve, they talked until four in the morning.

Many of their colleagues were among the 600 who attended the wedding on May 27, 2000. It was an “ODU wedding,” says Charlotte. “Now everyone is waiting for us to have a baby.” Carlton jokes that they would have to name the baby Big Blue.

Charlotte fondly remembers the funniest Valentine’s Day gift that Carlton ever gave her – a huge box of chocolates the day before she was due to get her tonsils out. “I couldn’t eat them, so he ate them all,” said Charlotte. For Valentine’s Day this year they will be spending the weekend at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, reminiscing about their last visit there on the way back from their honeymoon in the Poconos.

Charlotte knew Carlton was the one for her after their third date on New Year’s Eve, when they went to gospel-musician Kirk Franklin’s concert. “Carlton was singing “Lean on Me” – and he can’t sing, but I didn’t mind it, so I thought this must be the one,” she remembers.

Carlton, a confirmed bachelor who still lived at home, “admired Charlotte’s strength and determination and felt spiritually grounded with her,” but was finding it difficult to make the leap to married life. “What really solidified it for me was her family accepting me,” he said.

“My family is the athletic bunch so he fit right in,”noted Charlotte. And on a Gatling women retreat to North Carolina, Charlotte found that she fit in with his family, particularly with the shoppers.

Although their schedules are more harried now – Charlotte continues to work full time while taking nine credit hours to complete her degree in psychology and counseling – they still occasionally find time to stop by and see each other during the day. “That’s the best part about working together,” said Charlotte.
When she graduates this May, they may have more opportunities for their “sneak-a-date” lunches by the Elizabeth River.
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The Littles
Grace and Mike are living proof that opposites do, indeed, attract
A two-date courtship, nine-month engagement, 23 years of marriage and two children later, the Office of Computing and Communications Services’ Grace Ruiz Little and Mike Little are still very much the girl from Cuba and the boy from King George County.

Brimming with energy and drive, they couldn’t be any more different, but their differences complement one another nicely. Grace, ambitious and refined, likes operas and musicals. Mike, hard working and resourceful, prefers Mel Brooks comedies and fishing.

Their first meeting 24 years ago in the Computer Center was anything but love at first sight. Before the advent of the PC, not everyone had terminals, and when Mike was hired, Grace was next in line for one. “What they told me was that he was some hot shot from SCHEV and he would get the next terminal, so I started disliking him before he even came,” Grace recalls.

Mike, unaware of the waves he had caused prior to his arrival, asked her out one Monday morning. Grace decided to give him a chance – in spite of the fact that he mistakenly called her Gloria during his first week on the job. Mike made her dinner on their first date and took her to see “Time After Time” on their second date. And then he proposed.

The couple went to City Park in Portsmouth, where Grace could give her answer without her family around. “But I had to ask her father, which was hard,” said Mike.

“I’m from Cuba and when you marry, you marry into the family,” explained Grace. Mike soon developed a strong bond with Grace’s father and her hero, who had made the difficult decision to leave behind his life as a successful OB-GYN and start all over in the States, learning English and beginning a residency once again. Grace, one of six children, was only 5 years old when they left Cuba in 1961.

The engagement went smoothly, but their wedding day, March 1, 1980, would come to be known as the Blizzard of ’80. While the freak storm that dumped more than a foot of snow on Hampton Roads didn’t deter the wedding guests, it did make for a frantic bride. Mike called the house to reassure Grace that he would do whatever it took to make it to the wedding, even if it meant renting a helicopter.

Driving to Williamsburg for the first night of their honeymoon, they braved the snowy roads, and again the next day as they slowly made their way to Washington, D.C., where they caught a flight to their final destination, the Virgin Islands.

The excitement of their early days together hasn’t waned as the Littles now approach their silver anniversary. They learned to scuba dive last summer in the Bahamas with their college-age children, Tina and Chris, and they plan to meet Tina, a William and Mary student, on the island of Capri later this year to venture into cave diving.

Although the Littles have now worked near one another at OCCS for 24 years, it has only been in the last four years that they have worked together on specific projects. “If we had worked together after one to two years, I don’t think it would have turned out differently,” said Mike, director of information systems and database administration.

“We take work home with us, though we try not to,” added Grace, who is the assistant director of network applications and Web development. “About four years ago our kids asked us to stop, so we stopped.”
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