When Harry Met .. Bill and Christina Wise (who met in Saudi Arabia)

Christina Wise, a charming Scottish lady from the tiny hamlet (25 families) called Porten Cross in Ayrshire, was 44 and living in Saudi Arabia in 1984. She was a civilian, based out of the London Allied Medical Group, working for the past seven years with the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Defense.

She laughed when telling how she met the man who would become her husband. “My secretary told me Bill Wise had invited her to a function at the American Embassy on Friday night,” she recalled. “‘I’m going on leave Thursday as you know, so I told him you’d go.’ I said no.”

Christina said Wise telephoned her that evening: “There was a charming Southern gentleman on the other end,” she recalled. “He apologized for upsetting me, and he explained that he must have a date to balance the table. I still said no. He said that Vice President George Bush would be there; I said, 'Give my regards to Mr. Bush. I still can’t go.’”

(Bush was there to condemn the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, to deliver a $14 million check for Afghan refugees at nearby camps and to view the well-worn path that snakes its way through the harsh hills to the Khyber Pass for a peek across the border into Afghanistan.)

Christina continued about the phone invitation: “Mr. Wise promised to be a perfect gentleman, and I would be in no danger. I still said no. He then said that the event was at the American Embassy and they would be serving wine with the meal. I said, ‘Pick me up half past seven!’”

Thus began a romance leading to their marriage on December 5, 1989, at the Church of Saint Lazarus on the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea.

“Bill said he had to marry me to take me out of that terrible desert, but after the wedding, we went to the Sinai Desert for nine more years,” she said with a smile. “My life with him has been a blast.”

Now a bit about retired Maj. William Abernathy Wise ...

He was born and raised in Atlanta, and when his father failed to come home from World War II service in Europe, his family moved to the Fort Payne area.

Wise attended local schools, lied about his age (with the help of an older friend) to join the Army National Guard when he was 16 and graduated from Fort Payne School in 1954. Shortly thereafter, he enrolled in studies at Marion Military Institute near Montgomery.

A diagnosis of dyslexia prevented him from graduating, but did not prevent him from going on active duty in the U.S. Army at the end of the term.

Wise was named “Colonel of Cadets” after completing his studies, which led to his being referred to as “Colonel” during his 28-year military career that followed.

He spent three years stationed in Germany, then returned to the United States to train as a paratrooper at Fort Benning, Georgia. He eventually became a “jumpmaster,” teaching fellow soldiers the art of jumping out of airplanes.

His expertise as a jumper put him into the ranks of the Golden Knights, the demonstration and competition parachute team of the U.S. Army, often appearing at air shows and other larger media events.

Wise logged 1,000 parachute jumps, sometimes as many as six to eight per day. When asked if he had trouble jumping, he quickly responded with a laugh, “No sir, Isaac Newton took care of that.”

In 1966, he completed studies at the Army’s Officer Candidate School to become a commissioned officer. He retired in December 1978 as a major.

Wise served two tours of duty in Vietnam, and two more tours elsewhere. The first was in April 1965, following the collapse of the government and the outbreak of civil war in the Dominican Republic; he was one of many soldiers dispatched by President Lyndon Johnson to that country on a peace-keeping mission.

The other was in 1978; Wise was in a group deployed by President Jimmy Carter to serve on a peace-keeping force/mission in Mt. Sinai after the Camp David accord when Egypt and Israel decided to stop fighting each other.

A month after his retirement, Wise was in Saudi Arabia working for an engineering firm as a project manager, a job that lasted for nine years. That project was followed by another for the company (that also lasted for nine years), this time in Mount Sinai.

Bill and Christina left the Middle East in 1998 and located in Alabama. He went to work for the Department of Domestic Preparedness and Homeland Security that was based at Fort McClellan, near Anniston, teaching people how to be prepared during a major attack.

Today, Wise has retired (again); he and Christina live comfortably in his family homeplace overlooking the waters of Little River as they cascade over DeSoto Falls in DeKalb County.

DeSoto Falls

Bill Wise tells the story of the creation of DeSoto Falls:

“My maternal grandfather, Arthur Abernathy Miller (a self-educated electrical engineer), built dams to generate hydroelectric power for places that didn’t have electricity. He was from West Virginia and came to this area after losing a dam there due to an ice storm, saying he decided to come down to a place that was warmer.

“He came down here on an Indian trail in the early 1920s. After locating what we call Little River, he felt that there was enough water coming from this river to build a dam at this point, generating the head for the dyno-motors that were down in the pool that would create a waterfall to generate hydroelectric power and electricity, making enough electricity to provide the first lights and power throughout the Fort Payne area. A complete written history for all to see is on a large billboard display at the Falls.

“He built this house at the same time, so it has been in the family for the same amount of time. About 10 years after creating the power structure, he sold out to Alabama Power Company.”

Harry D. Butler, a former broadcaster, is a motivational speaker and author of “Alabama’s First Radio Stations, 1920-1960.” Butler periodically sits down with someone of note, then brings the conversation to readers. 

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: When Harry Met Bill and Christina Wise