Most people in the Pinewood community know that Bill and Jennifer Bates are married, but not many know that their story began at Pinewood in 1993, where they first met and spent time together as class advisors. As they went on multiple field trips with students, a friendship and connection between them formed.
“I remember on one was to the wharf in San Francisco, and the kids would all go off, and then we’re like, together,” Jennifer said. “So we hung out and got to know each other pretty well.”
The couple had a mutual friend: Andy Gibson, who helped bring Bill out to California and to Pinewood.
“It was him that I was visiting, and ended up working at the school for about six months, and then I went back to Massachusetts,” Bill said.
Then, in March, Bill got a call from Victor Riches, who offered him a long term position at Pinewood.
“Mr. Riches gave me a call and said, ‘We’d like you to come out and start our computer science department,’ because they didn’t have one at the time,” Bill said.
After accepting Riches’ offer, Bill came back to Pinewood and that is when the friendship between Jennifer, whose maiden name is Payne, and Bill blossomed into a deeper connection.
“Because we were friends with Andy, the three of us would go out on the weekends and do fun things and hang out as friends,” Jennifer said. “We were friends first, and then…it just kind of happened.”
Once they started dating, in their 20’s, none of their students knew that the two were a couple, yet they kept trying to get Jennifer and Bill together.
After they started dating, their relationship flourished and the pair grew closer, ultimately leading to Bill’s decision to propose to Jennifer. Charles Oliver, a close friend and teacher at Pinewood at the time, helped Bill make a plan.
“So Charles and I went around to pick an engagement ring and he helped me pick one out,” Bill said.
Bill proposed to Jennifer over the intercom system at Pinewood in May 1996.
At the time, the intercom system had a cassette player, so Bill recorded his proposal and played it over the loudspeaker while he was outside of Room 1 ready to ask Jennifer to marry him.
“So, when it got to the part in my speech where I was about to say …‘would you marry me?’, I walked in the door to her classroom and I got down on one knee, and I opened the ring,” Bill said.
Everybody cheered out and congratulated the couple. They got married in June 1997.
Years later, they welcomed two children, Casey and Quinn Bates, both of whom attended Pinewood. Casey graduated in 2018 and was part of the Pinewood Performing Arts (PPA), football, and baseball teams. Quinn graduated in 2020 and was also part of the PPA, cross-country, and baseball teams at Pinewood.
“We heard so much about Pinewood growing up, like how our parents met, how our dad proposed on campus, the friends they’d made working there,” Casey Bates said. “When we eventually came to Pinewood as students, we thought it was special to not only experience the place that held such significance in our parents lives, but also to make cherished memories of our own there.”
The Bates’ relationship is a testament of the connections that are created here at Pinewood School, among our staff and members of the community alike.
“Pinewood has the same values that we have, so I feel like we get to live it all the time, all day, and our kids went here, and our kids loved it,” Jennifer said. “Our whole family benefited from it.”