Dr. Joel James and René Elms
“Had to have a good memory.” At StoryCorps, engineering professor Dr. René Elms describes how her husband, Joel James - who oversees configuration management services at the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences - proposed marriage in front of family and friends in the engineering building at Texas A&M University.
- [René] He hung like all my Bluetooth driving up, and he's, oh it's awful, the plant design class, is you know, mad about their project this year so they vandalized the fifth floor of the building and I was mad, like this is my building. This is chemical engineering building, how dare they do that and he's like look up at the fifth floor whenever you drive up and I looked up and I was like, what, what's that up there? And the sun was so bright, I couldn't actually see the letters. I could see there was something, but I didn't know what it was. And then all of a sudden, a friend of mine who's also an Aggie too, who worked with me in industry, came running up from the side to my car. And I was like what is she doing here? And Gigi Haskins, she ran up and she says let me in, let me in, and I'm like what are you doing over here? And why are you in the middle of the road? So she comes up and she says just go ahead and park, she said I have the tag for you to park. You know, for your meeting, and I'm like oh okay. She's a chemical engineer too, right so, was confused but I thought maybe she was there for business. So then I go and I park and then I'm like, well why are you here? She's like don't ask me any questions. I'm like okay, we walk in and the Jackie Brown Building is absolutely gorgeous, it's all glass and when you walk in the front of the atrium, it's like two stories up and you have this big grand staircase that goes up to a balcony and so I walked in and I looked up and the whole balcony was full of faculty and our friends and you know my family and everything and GiGi's you know, I look at Gigi I'm like what's going on, she's like go up the stairs. I'm still like, still almost half clueless of what's going on, but I'm starting to get a clue. And Joel is at the top of the stairs and meets me about halfway and then now I'm gettin', I'm gettin' what's going on, and everybody's clapping and all excited and so he takes me up the rest of the way up the staircase and then kneels down and has a ring box and you know asked me to marry him and everybody applauds and screams and yells and I said yes, you know. If you didn't guess that I said yes I said yes to that question, that was the important question.
- [Joel] Yes, yes.
- [René] Right, to say yes too.
- [Joel] Previous 99 times, you didn't but that one you did
- [René] We didn't have a ring, you finally had a ring.
- [Joel] I had the ring, you helped design the ring.
- [René] Well that is true
- [Joel] Had the ring sitting in my vault for nine months.
- [René] But I told you, you had to have a good proposal. Had to have a good memory and it's a really big deal for Joel to done something like that, because Joel is really--
- [Joel] Outside my comfort zone
- [René] Yes, very shy, very doesn't wanna make a big deal about things, doesn't wanna be the center of attention. And anyway so, told me how much he was trying to give me what I wanted because he did something so outside of his comfort zone. And what was really neat too, is that GiGi, who's you know, she was also she's a bridesmaid in the party, in the wedding party, who all was there, who all the sudden appeared out of nowhere next to my car, her and her daughter helped Joel because her daughter was currently either a junior or senior chemical engineer at the time in the department, and we're all friends and so they actually helped him put the letters up and keep him calm and they were all in on it. You know, so he had a whole little crew of people that were ...
- [Joel] And I had someone video taping, I had someone taking pictures.
- [René] Taking pictures So we actually recorded it pretty well, he did a good job of recording it, and I had my doctoral advisor was there and a whole bunch of faculty that meant a lot, you know. And for us, it meant a lot to be in that place because we met in the department and then our friendship grew in the department and then we you know, we fell in love all kind of intertwined with the department. So it really meant a lot to us to end up having that moment right there, you know. That was really nice. So but we didn't end there though
- [Joel] Then we had to ...