{"id":24189,"date":"2023-03-29T14:02:13","date_gmt":"2023-03-29T18:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=24189"},"modified":"2024-03-26T16:13:24","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T20:13:24","slug":"divine-intervention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/divine-intervention\/","title":{"rendered":"After the Aisle: Divine Intervention"},"content":{"rendered":"

You might say music brought them together. Or, as legend has it, it was Cindy Creech DeFoor\u2019s grandmother\u2019s divinity fudge.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever sparked the relationship, no one can deny that music remains an integral part of Cindy and Fred DeFoor\u2019s lives. Both Furman Singers, the two described their Furman experience while on the way from Columbia, South Carolina, to a Singers reunion on campus \u2013 a biennial tradition since 1979 that routinely draws up to 150 alumni from around the world.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fred \u201977, a church music alumnus, served 34 years as a music minister in Columbia. He first heard of Cindy Creech \u201978, an education major, through his roommate, the late David Belcher \u201979, a piano performance major and Furman Singer who was a close family friend of Cindy\u2019s.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As such, Belcher was in possession of the infamous homemade divinity fudge from Cindy\u2019s grandmother, and he shared it with Fred. The white, fluffy and apparently heavenly confection captured Fred\u2019s attention, and not much later, the determined Belcher introduced Fred to Cindy next to Furman Lake outside the Dining Hall.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The couple\u2019s first date was Homecoming 1976, topped off by a fancy dinner at Pixie and Bill\u2019s steakhouse in Clemson, South Carolina. Then they carved a pumpkin. The courtship lasted just a few months, then it stalled for the spring and summer and was rekindled the fall of 1977, just in time for another Homecoming.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, Homecoming has always been a special time for us,\u201d Fred says. \u201cI grew up over that summer and matured enough to get my head on straight.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The following January, Fred took Cindy on a drive through downtown Greenville, which in the late \u201970s might have been ill-advised, Cindy recalls. \u201cI think it was probably a pretty sketchy area, only we didn\u2019t know it.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fred pulled over somewhere near the Reedy River and began to read a letter in which he poured out his heart to Cindy and asked her to be his wife.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They married about six months later. Now celebrating 44 years together, the DeFoors are retired, Cindy having served 28 years as a special needs educator for preschoolers. They look forward to traveling, including more Furman Singers reunions and Homecomings, since for the DeFoors \u201ca Furman reunion is a family reunion,\u201d Cindy says. Fred\u2019s three siblings are Furman alumni, and three of the four met their spouses at Furman.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Post-retirement options also include a possible move to the Upstate, in addition to spending more time with their grandchildren and two daughters \u2013 one of them a Furman music alumna, the other a Winthrop music graduate. As for their friend David Belcher \u201979, who died too young at the age of 60 in 2018, after serving as chancellor of Western Carolina University, the DeFoors remember him fondly.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019ll always hold a special place in our hearts for introducing us all those years ago,\u201d Cindy says.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cindy \u201978 and Fred DeFoor \u201977<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":24490,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1966,1963,1964],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-class-notes","category-furman-magazine","category-spring-2023"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}