“I’m Getting Married in an Hour, I’m on My Way to Pick You Up”

BY JE’DON HOLLOWAY-TALLEY | Special to the Birmingham Times YOLANDA AND LOLANDO PEARSON Live: Titusville Married: Sept. 20, 1985 Met: In the fall of 1983 at Southern Technical College in Irondale. Yolanda was 20, and Lolando was 22. They were in the same classes and became good friends. “I think both of us were really focused on school, and it seemed that he knew what he was doing so I would often go to him and ask him questions…,” Yolanda recalled. “He had a dictaphone [a device used for recording and transcribing spoken words, often used in professional settings] and would listen to books and things that he was interested in and I thought he was smart and I was attracted to intelligence. I already had Roderick [her son who was 2 at the time] and I think we were both just focused on our futures. And then we discovered that he grew up in the same neighborhood as my grandparent’s home [in Airport Hill/Birmingham] and that we knew a lot of the same people, and that made our connection stronger.” “At the time, I had just lost my father, and I was just trying to find my way…  after...