When Bitsey Yarbrough stepped onto the farm run by Benny Hinkle’s father in 1951, it was love at first sight, Benny says. She was 12 years old, and he was a 15-year-old “country boy.” Bitsey was visiting her aunt, who lived on Benny’s father’s farm.
It was the start of a 71-year-long romance where the two were rarely apart from the other.
Over the course of their lives, Benny and Bitsey drove to Oklahoma in the middle of the night to get married, bought a house north of Bishop Arts, managed the snack bar at the Bronco Bowl and raised two children, four grandchildren and five great grandchildren.
Bitsey Hinkle died peacefully in the company of Benny on March 6.
“She is deeply missed,” Benny says.
An Oak Cliff girl born and raised, Bitsey attended Grace Temple Baptist Church for the majority of her life.
Benny was impressed by Bitsey, who was social and a “very smart lady who loved to dance.”
She modeled clothing for Neiman Marcus and was in the first class to graduate from L.V. Stockard Middle School. She was a majorette at Sunset High School and was voted homecoming queen.
They would go on chaperoned dates to the movies, and Bitsey would come to Benny’s football games. When Bitsey’s stepfather received a work transfer to Lubbock, Bitsey refused to move away from her sweetheart.
“I said, ‘Look, you need to go to Lubbock. Just go ahead. I’ll get a scholarship, I’ll go to Texas Tech. I don’t want to, but I will,’” Benny says. “This happened a week before we got married.”
On New Year’s Eve 1954, Bitsey and Benny hatched a plan to drive to Durant, Oklahoma, to get married. Six days later, they did just that.
They took Bitsey’s ’53 Dodge Ram convertible and set off to Oklahoma after Benny had finished playing in a basketball tournament. They were married at 11:06 p.m. in front of two witnesses, and Benny spent his last $20 on the officiant.
Driving back to Dallas, the newlyweds “didn’t have money to stop and get a Coke or nothing,” he says.
They were married in secret for five months, until it was time for Bitsey’s family to move to Lubbock. When her mother found out about the marriage she tried to have it annulled, but a judge said too much time had passed.
After that, Benny and Bitsey moved around once or twice as they settled into married life.
In 1957, with a $1,500 down payment loaned to the couple by a woman who had helped raise Bitsey, Benny bought the home at 623 North Winnetka where the couple raised children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. The total cost at the time was $8,750.
Both Benny and Bitsey bowled in multiple leagues at the Bronco Bowl. Bitsey was a secretary at the Bowl, and she and Benny eventually invested as partners in the snack bar.
In 1969, they bought the snack bar completely, and Bitsey managed it for the next 17 years.
“They used to call her the Hamburger Queen, because she could cook a mean hamburger,” Benny says.
Benny says that he and Bitsey essentially “lived at the Bronco Bowl,” and that even their two children were known for spending time and working at the Bowl.
Between her Bronco Bowl leagues, her snack serving and her church involvement, “everyone knew” Bitsey, he says.
In 2017, the Hinkles sold their North Winnetka home after 60 years.
In the final years of her life, Bitsey suffered from dementia. But Benny says she always remembered the house they’d spent their lives in.
“It broke her heart to sell the house,” Benny says. “Before she died, she said, ‘I wish I was back home.’”
Always an inseparable pair, Bitsey died in Benny’s arms just two weeks before her 83rd birthday. He says she “eased off” peacefully, like falling asleep.
