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There’s a perfunctory way in which Arnold ‘Arnie’ Bunch II gets ready for a high school game in Hamblen County: the retired four-star general chooses one of two ties, either orange or crimson.

As a comparison, one that illustrates her role in the community and their 38-year marriage, Carolyn Bunch wears what she wants.

“I have to be neutral,” Arnie said – “And I don’t!” Carolyn counters.

The Morristown East High graduate has no qualms about proclaiming her loyalty to the ‘Canes, even to the point of declining the Superintendent of Schools’ invitations to join him on the other side of the gym or the field during a cross-town showdown.

Neutrality in the face of school spirit is a lonely career tactic in the Bunch household.

Carolyn comes by that fierce support of her alma mater honestly.

She spent years while being educated in Hamblen County cheering for teams on the East side of the town that raised her and her beau-to-be.

“I actually remember her as a cheerleader at Hillcrest in the sixth grade when I played on the John Hay elementary basketball team,” Arnie said. “She was much, much taller than I was and I remember looking at her and thinking, ‘Lord, she’s a giant!’”

Easy, affectionate banter peppered the recent conversation between the two at Little Dutch restaurant.

Sitting close in a booth, they leaned into one another while speaking and finished each other’s sentences (or interrupted, depending on interpretation) demanded their own version of shared stories be heard and laughed like co-conspirators, all while tolerating WINK questions. Photographer Daniel Munson captured the shenanigans.

“All the way back to the fifth grade for me, when I remember her,” Arnie said. “But we really started getting to know each other and we started dating and going steady when we were in high school.”

“I remember him from Junior High,” Caroline said. “That’s the first time I remember him.”

“She was a cheerleader at Junior High, and I was on the 7th grade basketball team,” Arnie said.

He attended Meadowview, while Caroline was in the last eighth grade class at Morristown Junior High.

“The first time we actually started flirting with each other was during basketball,” Caroline said.

“In 1979 when East – we had a very good basketball team and that was the year we went to state – as we went to the district and the regional and the sub-state, that was when we started interacting with each other,” Arnie said.

“We have a mutual best friend, I guess, and that would be Elaine Thompson Baker,” Caroline said. “I’m a year older than Arnie, so it was my senior year, his junior year. But Elaine was kind of the one who got us together, per say. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I would agree,” Arnie responded. “And, uh, I don’t even think I’d asked you out yet, but she came out with Elaine to my house one night …”

He didn’t have to finish the sentence to goad a laugh out of her – “Are you going to tell that story?” Caroline said with a good bit of mock dismay.

“Yeah, I’m going to tell that story,” he retorted.

“Let ME tell it, it’s better,” she said.

“OK, go ahead,” Arnie acquiesced.

“So, I decided that I really liked him,” Caroline said, “And Elaine was like, ‘Well, I know where he lives’ – he lived out in Russellville. I grew up in Oak Hills and Elaine grew up in Oak Hills.

“It was a Sunday night. And back then, we always had youth group on Sunday night. Elaine and I went to First Methodist, so we devised a plan. We would have these secret destinations, as part of youth group. But we really didn’t have one that night. But we said that’s what we were going to use as an excuse to go to his house. We went to his house and walked in – and his dad (the original Arnie Bunch) was playing Poker.”

“There were six men sitting around the table playing Poker on a Sunday night,” Arnie said. “That was her introduction to me and my family, first time she ever met them all.”

Caroline’s survival of Poker night inspired Arnie. He decided not to waste any time.

“On her birthday, I went and gave her three rosebuds. That night, we went to the basketball game. The girls were playing in the regionals in Sevier County. I went over and that was the first night that I asked her out on a date.

“Six days later, we went on our first date. That was a Friday night. I asked you to go steady on Monday. We started going steady on Tuesday and we’ve been together ever since. In a span of 10 days, we went from ‘I’m asking you out on a date’ to ‘We’re going steady,’” he said.

The romance, and hilarity, ensued.

Their early history includes Little Dutch. Arnie has a clear memory of the basketball team being brought to the restaurant during Regionals.

The meals were paid for by a local pharmacist with a vaguely familiar name.

The cheerleaders were seated on the other side of the restaurant, so Arnie had to wait a bit to ask Caroline a now infamous question: “Who is Bud Jones?”

The first of many retorts came from her direction: “It’s my dad!!”

Caroline played Morgan LaFay in “Camelot” at East. Arnie sat right next to the former owner of Crescent Center Drugs.

“She comes out after the play, and I tell her ‘I don’t think your dad likes me very much. I would talk to him, and he wouldn’t really respond.’ She goes, ‘What side did you sit on?’” Arnie said. “He’s deaf in one ear. So, the whole night I’m trying to carry on a conversation with a gentleman I’ve only met a couple of times, who I didn’t really didn’t even know who he was before we started dating, and I thought I had just ruined everything.

“But they eventually put up with me,” Arnie said.

“His family were all big card players,” Caroline said. “I grew up playing cards, too, but not as much as his family. And so, one of our dates was going to be playing Rook with his mom and dad.

“And Elaine told me, ‘Don’t listen to anything that his dad says, because he’ll talk you into playing cards that you don’t want to play.’ That was true, very true. We played a lot of Rook, we played a lot of 7-Hand Rummy, Shanghai Rummy ….”

“We played a lot of cards,” Arnie said.

So, how did high school dating parlay into a nearly four-decade military partnership?

“I had really never thought about going in the military,” Arnie said. “No recent family history of military service. No-one in my family had ever gone to college, and dad was determined that I was going to go to college; I was the first one. He worked two jobs, saved everything. Watching him do that, I said, ‘Well I’m going to apply for ROTC and I’m going to apply for the Air Force Academy – and honestly never believing that I would be able to actually get in. And then I got nominated and got appointed to the academy. It was a big deal back then (“For this area,” Caroline interjected) More are doing it now,” Arnie said.

“Dad and mom shortly after that went on a trip and Dad pulled me into the kitchen and said, ‘You need to do well at the Air Force Academy,’ and I said ‘What are you talking about?’ and he pointed out the window to the 17 1/2 foot bass boat with 115 horsepower motor and said, ‘Your college money is behind the truck right now, so you need to do well.’”

“That was how we got started in it,” Arnie said. “You’re going steady, you’re very close, now you’re making a decision to go to a school, and you can’t get married while you’re there.”

The destinations were Colorado Springs for him, the University of Tennessee for her. They thought at first, after his graduation from the Academy, that the military might be a short stint.

“We didn’t figure we would stay very long. But then we fell in love with what we were doing,” he said. (“Very much so,” Caroline added.) “I still believe her father probably greatly questions why he allowed me to steal his daughter away for all those years because I’m sure when that gawky, gangly looking long-haired (yes, I had hair!) high school kid takes your daughter on a date, you’re probably not thinking they’re gonna’ go be in the military for 38 years.”

So, Caroline, how did you fall in love with the military?

“I liked the camaraderie,” she said. “You’re kind of in the same boat as everybody else, all the other spouses, especially during the first two or three assignments. A lot of people are away from their families.

“Nobody has family that lives in the town that you’re in. You gravitate to each other. The Air Force does a good job: the squadron has a spouse group; the officers have a group. There are loads of volunteer opportunities. My take when he got higher rank was that ‘you make it what you want.’”

“When we first got in, I engrossed myself,” Caroline said. “We get married after he graduates the Academy. Our first assignment is Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi. We get there later, so base housing is gone. We had to live off base. He starts casual duty status, so he leaves every day. A lot of the guys from the Academy are there, so he has friends. He leaves me in the TLF (temporary lodging facility) all day long. I had nothing to do. I didn’t like him much for the first two or three weeks.

“Then we got into an apartment. Our upstairs neighbors became dear friends by the time pilot training ended.

“It can be very lonely, if you are an introvert or if you’re just not determined to get out there. I took the road of ‘I’m not going to sit on my couch.’

“We were at pilot training for a year, we went six months for training, the first base was Fairchild in Washington State; can’t get much farther away from Tennessee. Luckily, we met families during training that were going to the same base. So, I had those three spouses. As soon as we got to Fairchild, we engrossed with the squadron.”

California was the next stop for the Bunch partnership.

“We went to Castle Air Force Base for me to learn how to fly B-52s,” Arnie said. “We got in, we found a one-room apartment in a pretty sketchy part of town, and a few days later, I left for training and left her by herself.

“I had to drive him to San Francisco,” Caroline said. “Drop him off and then go back. Two hours.”

“She knew nobody,” Arnie said. “That’s what we ask our spouses in a lot of cases to be able to do. It’s so unbelievable what they do, to look out for each other.

“Military spouses are the best value the Unites States citizen gets. We don’t pay them a penny. We go places. I’m gonna go in and I’m probably going to fly a new plane or have a great job. I’m going to know people, everything else. I go off to work and I leave her.

“She’s trying to figure out initially, ‘OK, who do I know? But then later on, ‘Where are the kids going to school? Who’s going to be the doctor, who’s going to be the dentist? What are we going to do for sports teams?’”

“Young and crazy,” Caroline said. “Naïve. You just do it. Nowadays, they talk about resiliency especially with Air Force families. And it’s true, if you don’t get that resiliency ….”

“They ask their spouses not to serve anymore, and we lose them,” Arnie said.

“They can’t handle it,” Caroline said. “I thought it was great. We met some great people. We have a good grip on what’s going on in America because of the places we’ve lived. Our boys are that way. They’ve been exposed to a lot that a lot of people haven’t; they’re not from a small town, they’re from all over. One (Arnie III) was born at Fairchild in Washington State and one (Louis) in California. They’re West Coast babies.”

“Arnie III, Megan and the grandbabies live in Knoxville and Louis and Liz are in Murfreesboro. The stars aligned for retirement. I’m thrilled about that. I don’t have to get on a plane.”

So, how did the stars align – what led to the return home?

“I had always thought about coming back here. And I started looking at property and areas that we might come back to. What I thought I would do is I would come back and whatever I needed do after that – I didn’t have a plan for what I was going to do after that. I could hop out of Knoxville or the Tri-cities to wherever I wanted to do some work, or whatever I wanted to do,” Arnie said. “So that was really the initial plan – ‘YOUR initial plan,’ Caroline interjected – and Arnie agreed.

“Later on, she decided that the places that I was looking at weren’t exactly what she was looking for and then she helped me find a place that we wanted to live,” Arnie said.

“So, when we knew our last assignment was our ‘last’ assignment, we would have three years there. So, we did kind of start planning,” Caroline said. “I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to come all the way back to Morristown. I thought maybe the surrounding area, within like a two or three-hour range.

“So, for 38 years, I came back a lot. I brought the kids a lot. They had good relationships with their grandparents because I made the effort. Because I did not work outside the home in a paying job (except for substitute teaching while in Ohio). I made an effort to bring the kids home; and when we came home, we came for two or three weeks at a time, until they got in school – and after that, it was during the summer. I mean, I had spent a lot of time in Morristown, and I had seen Morristown change a lot in 38 years.

“So that’s what I told him. He did not travel back here as much with us. I said, ‘Do you really want to go back there? it’s not what you left.’ Not that that’s a bad thing. ‘As long as you can embrace that.’ So then, I caught him looking at properties in Morristown. He would show me, and I would say, ‘Nope, nope, nope.’”

The criteria for a home included a ranch floor plan, if possible, no steps.

“This is our forever home: I’m dying there,” she said. “Everything seemed to have steps, sloped back yards and beautiful decks, with lots of steps. Then, we were lucky and found something. We bought it two years before retirement, which was not the plan, but we were blessed.”

So, the part about education … and what happened to retirement?

“I thought that I would be going and working with industry and doing those kinds of things,” Arnie said. “November 2021, I got a note from a former boss who said, ‘You should be applying for this job’ and it was to be the president of the University of Memphis.

Caroline quickly asserted that “Memphis was not a commutable distance from Morristown,” and Arnie conceded the point.

“But what it showed me was someone who had mentored and worked with me thought that I could step into education and make a difference, capitalize on the leadership that I’d built within the Air Force – and what I had learned in the Air Force over those years, of being a Commander or a Director as many times as I had,” Arnie said.

The note gave him the confidence to start looking into education positions in this area, to locate a work assignment that would allow him to serve in new ways. A week before the application process for Hamblen County Schools Superintendent closed, his sister called him: “You talked about making a difference, you might think about doing this,” she said.

I initially thought, ‘There is no way anyone on the school board would think of me for this role,’ and so I started doing some behind-the-scenes research,” Arnie said. “I didn’t want to waste anybody’s time; I didn’t want to waste my time. But I got the feedback that ‘Yep’ I should do it. And I did this because I was able to serve in the military, and we were able to do what we were able to do because of the education I got here locally. I had great teachers, great principals, great superintendent, great board members – they set it up so that I could get the education to go out and do stuff.”

Caroline needed no research to support the confidence she had in Arnie.

“Honestly, I knew that he would do fine. I had no qualms about that. I knew that the school district would be in good hands. And I knew that he would make it better, and if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be for a lack of trying. His work ethic is beyond reproach, to a fault sometimes. Did I think this is what retirement would be? Absolutely not! That part was a little adjustment for me. If anything, the transition is about what we had been doing all along.”

“I had to say ‘Hey, I’m thinking about doing this; are you going to be able to support this?’ because you know how I go at these things,” Arnie said.

The couple was committed at this point, but for how long? The Hamblen County Board of Education was curious. Arnie told board members at the candidate public hearing he would serve at least six years.

His current thoughts are: “I’m not going anywhere. As long as they want me to serve, I’ll serve. The kids deserve it. We need them ready to go out and be contributing members of society. Because if we don’t do that, I worry about the viability and the long-term sustainability of the community. If we aren’t turning out graduates that are ready to go and do the jobs; if we’re not doing that, I don’t know how we continue to prosper and sustain Morristown and Hamblen County.”

So, you’ve earned a great deal of respect – how do you show respect?

“The people are what it’s all about and I truly learned that predominantly from my father,” Arnie said, his face showing effort to control his emotions.

He paused before speaking again.

“My father, book wise, probably not the most educated person ever, but my dad knew how to treat people with respect. And he understood that people deserved that respect and show it to them until the point that they showed you they didn’t deserve that respect and then you treated them accordingly, once they showed you they didn’t deserve that respect.

“My father, it didn’t matter if you were the president of the bank or the greens keeper, custodial staff or ‘whatever.’ My dad showed everybody respect, appreciated them, listened to them, talked to them. And that to me … I had somebody ask me ‘Who taught you about leadership? You’ve served in all these roles; you’ve had those four stars.’ I would answer ‘My dad.’ When you’re a commander, which is what most people want to be in the Air Force, you get to lead an organization, you work with your spouse to take care of families.

“The Air Force gives you a pin that you wear on your uniform, above your name tag if you’re in an active commander position. Or if the position is inactive, you put it under your name tag to show you’ve been a commander before. When you make General Officer, you don’t wear that pin anymore. I wore my pin anyway – I took it off my uniform (during the One Star ceremony) and gave it to my father, because he was the one that taught me the most about leadership and what it really meant to treat people with respect and dignity, regardless. Every individual brings value.”

Caroline said, “Leadership is not really about being the boss – it’s kind of about being a boss, but it’s about taking care of your people and encouraging them and cheerleading them.”

So, what is something that WINK readers might not know about you?

“He’s an introvert, believe it or not,” Carolyn said.

“Strong introvert. That is the one that most people don’t get,” Arnie added.

“Active duty wise, when we were at conferences, when we would walk in the door at the end of the day, he was wiped out. He was tired of hand shaking and talking and ‘fightin’ the fight’ as we call it. Even, come Friday in a regular week, he was ‘spent.’

“Sometimes we would have things at night and so he literally would have an hour to get ready to go and we’d have to be on our toes again. He is an introvert in that respect, so it takes a lot of effort for him to ‘play the extrovert.’

To regain his energy, Arnie works out regularly and makes sure he gets that ‘me’ time.

“On the weekends, I don’t usually do anything with anybody – that’s my recharge time,” he said.

And … there is sometime confusion about Arnie’s age.

“I had a lady the other day at a concession stand who informed me that she went to high school with me at Whitesburg – which means she had tied me back to my father, who was 19 years older to me. And I went, ‘OK, that’s a bold statement about what I look like today.’ Because I have historically been the individual that has had my age overestimated dramatically.”

“Always,” Carolyn said.

She had a bit of trouble getting that one word answer out because of all the laughing.

“I got asked to play on the ‘Over 30’ basketball team when I was 23,” he said.

Surprising facts about Caroline include the fact that she is having to adjust to the ‘non-retirement,’ including a lot of court time these days, which is a good thing, she said, and she misses at least one of the perks that come with the 4-Star General role.

“I enjoy the sports part for sure. I do enjoy supporting education and in fact, I feed him information – ‘Hey, the choir’s doing this, if you’re interested in showing up’ or they’re doing this over at the school. I have a very dear friend and we commiserate. Her husband is ‘retired,’ too.

“At the level Arnie was at in the military, we had two aides that came to the house every day. They took care of everything. And I guess people don’t understand that. I would say to one of them, ‘the faucet in the upstairs bathroom is messed up’ and they would call maintenance and it would magically get fixed and I didn’t have to do anything. That was a benefit of his rank and his job.

“Now, I’m like ‘Oh my God, I have to call somebody to get that done, wait a minute.’ I’ve had to reintegrate myself into ‘Oh, I get to take care of everything now.’”

“I’ve been very, very blessed that she’s gone along and help me do all these different things, because without her, I would not have been able to have done any of them,” Arnie said.

“We’ve been married 38 years, and I still don’t know how I tricked her into marrying me. I know I’m never tricking anybody else, I just need to keep her along side of me, supporting me, because I know I’ve been very fortunate. It’s not easy being a military spouse; it’s not easy in a lot of the roles that I’ve stepped into and this one is one that may not be easy for her because everybody knows who I am in the community now, and they know her by that and it’s not easy, but she has done a phenomenal job of being a great ‘wing man’ and allowing me to be able to do what I wanted to go do and serve.”