Joyce Lathan Woodhouse

Wedding Night

Special times

Joyce and Wilson were dressed to impress when they left the Mansion after their December 28, 1963 Wedding and Reception

No one gave NC State a chance at beating top-ranked Houston for college basketball's national championship on this date in 1983. Columnist Dave Kindred summed up the pregame attitude best when he wrote that "Trees will tap dance, elephants will ride in the Indianapolis 500, and (rotund celebrity) Orson Wells will skip breakfast, lunch, and dinner before State finds a way to beat Houston." Following NC State’s historic upset, writer Dave Kindred immediately owned his legendary miscalculation by opening his post-game column in The Washington Post with a playful retraction of his own words. In his piece titled "Say Goodnight, Phi Slama Pajamas," he wrote:"Trees tap danced, an elephant will drive for A.J. Foyt at Indy and Orson Welles skipped breakfast, lunch and dinner. The wise-acre trembling at this typewriter guaranteed those things would happen before North Carolina Dreaming State ever beat Houston..."He leaned entirely into the joke, effectively telling the world that the impossible had just happened. This spoke to Joyce, who typed up the quote and kept it in her classroom on a notecard. She saved it for years, as a way of saying the so called impossible can happen. Kindred’s pregame column was so widely read that other journalists used it as a springboard for their own post-game coverage. Most famously, sports editor Joe Tiede of Raleigh's News & Observer crafted one of the most celebrated leads in sports journalism history the next morning, simply writing:"Elephants, start your engines."How Jim Valvano Handled ItRather than being bitter, NC State head coach Jim Valvano loved the quote and the narrative. For decades after the game, Valvano and Kindred remained good friends and frequently joked about the prediction. Valvano regularly highlighted the "tap-dancing trees" line in his public speaking engagements to illustrate how hope, belief, and persistence can overcome any expert's math.

While dating Wilson in the late 1950's Joyce first met Eunice Woodhouse. Eunice, a character in her own right, introduced herself by lifting up her skirt and showing Joyce where she "accidently" shot herself with a shotgun