A Cinematic Romance

Their love story didn’t begin on the Hilltop, but it’s what keeps them coming back.

Any fan of Jane Austen (or When Harry Met Sally) knows that sometimes the greatest love stories begin with a bit of pride and a dash of prejudice.

Don Kirkpatrick ’57 and Katherine “Rusty” Glass ’64 didn’t attend BSC at the same time but the Hilltop has played an important role in their lives. Their paths first crossed when Don’s then-girlfriend introduced them in Huntsville. Rusty had moved there after graduation for a teaching job. Don was opening an office there.

“I could not stand him,” Rusty confessed. “I thought he was the most egotistical man. He thought I was a snob.”

As Carrie Fisher said in When Harry Met Sally, what happens after the woman declares the man “contemptible” is the stuff of grand romances: “And then they fell madly in love.”

It took a bit of time, though.

“He said, ‘I’m going to introduce you to all the eligible bachelors in Huntsville.’ He would take me to dinner regularly,” Rusty said. “I would always ask if my roommate could come too. Eventually, I said, ‘Don, you haven’t introduced me to one bachelor,” and he said, ‘And I’m not going to.’”

Eventually they each were living in Birmingham. The girlfriend wasn’t the girlfriend anymore. Don asked Rusty out on a series of dates. She was ambivalent – or so she thought – until the night in 1965, when the two sat side by side for a showing of The Sound of Music at Alabama Theatre. On the screen, Julie Andrews’ Maria realized she was in love with Christopher Plummer’s stern and arrogant Captain Von Trapp.

And in that dark movie theater, Rusty Glass suddenly realized she was in love with Don Kirkpatrick.

It’s a good thing, too, because Don said later that he’d decided that was the last time he was asking the ambivalent redhead out.

The two married at All Saints Episcopal Church in Birmingham. (Donald A. Brown ’58, author of Forward, Ever, was the best man.) And just as the music soars in a cinematic romance, music marked the joining of two soulmates.

“I wasn’t married when I said I do,” Rusty said. “I was married the moment the choir sang the Sevenfold Amen.”

A montage of more than 50 years of marriage would show two children and four grandchildren, and the long-lasting connection the two share on the Hilltop. It would show Rusty’s 17 years as an associate professor of education at BSC – “Dr. K,” as she was known to her students, retired in 2006. It would show a decade of devotion to BSC football – they’ve only missed one home game.

While love of the sport certainly plays a large part in their status as No. 1 fans – “I couldn’t be married to Don and not love it; it’s part of our vows,” Rusty said – football also gives them a reason to come back to the college that has had such an impact on their lives, both individually and as a couple.

Before each game, they prop open the car trunk and dig into an ice chest that holds shrimp and white wine. When they head into the stands – where they always sit in the same seats – Rusty brings a snack bag filled with her “famous” cheese straws, and the two sit side by side and cheer on the Panthers.

“We’ve been married 53 years,” Rusty said. “And we still like each other.”