Hometown Brandon - Spring 2016

The
way
we
were.
Mattie & Uriel Padgett
Blind dates sometimes have “happily ever
after” endings. Mattie and Uriel Padgett are one
of those examples. In October of 1954, mutual
friends arranged a blind date for Mattie, a rural
Raleigh girl and Uriel, who was from Magee.
Uriel liked Mattie so well that he asked
her for a second date. She didn’t hesitate
with a positive response because as Mattie
remembered, “He was very nice, considerate
and treated me like a lady.”
Uriel knew he had done something right
because she said yes to that request for a second
date. He also earned perks by taking her to the
movie, The Magnificent Obsession, starring Cary
Grant. “I cried in the movie,” Mattie admitted,
but from that first date, the two created their
own magnificent obsession.
After their fourth date, Uriel took a
backwoods shortcut to his house but was run
off the road by an oncoming, reckless driver.
It was an ordeal to find a tractor and retrieve
Uriel’s vehicle from the ditch in the dark. Since
this was the era of limited land lines and no cell
phones, Uriel wrote Mattie a letter and
explained why he wouldn’t be able to see her
sooner. Someone actually stole the letter out of
the mailbox, so Mattie went for several days
wondering about Uriel’s vanishing from her life.
However, Uriel hadn’t forgotten Mattie and
was soon back in contact and scheduling dates.
6 • Spring 2016