RALEIGH - More than 50 years ago, Audry Heatwole met a guy in her English class at Goshen College in Goshen, Ind. On their second date, they took a ride in a rowboat up a river to visit a heron colony where birds were nesting.

On the way back, it rained and Audry Heatwole got drenched. Hal Heatwole apologized.

"That's quite all right," she responded, seemingly not put out in the least.

Her reaction spurred him to consider marriage.

"I thought she might be a good wife for a field biologist," he said.

He was right. Her good humor extended to their honeymoon at a biology station in Michigan, where she assisted him with a project about snakes.

Audry Heatwole died of a stroke a couple of months ago. She was 75.

While their honeymoon may not have been the most exotic or luxurious, the couple made up for that in future years.

Once they moved to Raleigh in 1991, the Heatwoles took an annual trip. One of them planned it and the other waited to learn of the destination, often only after they reached the airport and sometimes considerably later.

The goal was to prolong the mystery as long as possible. To that end, the Heatwole orchestrating the vacation also did the packing.

Sometimes, the other one perused his or her closet trying to identify missing items that would provide a clue. Were the bathing suits and tank tops gone? Maybe they were heading to an island. Except that more than once, summer clothes were packed when the destination was actually more arctic.

Gotcha.

But they did travel north (to an island off Norway within 600 miles of the North Pole where they videotaped polar bears) and south (to Patagonia). They traveled east to Spain and Austria and west to northwest Australia. In her early 70s, Audry Heatwole hopped aboard a motorcycle and embarked with her husband on a 10,000-mile trip from Raleigh to Fairbanks, Alaska.

One year, it was her turn to plan.

"We're not going to leave until tomorrow," she told her husband. Then she said the same thing the next day and the next.

Finally, she revealed the truth: They were staying home. Hal Heatwole had a book to finish and his wife was giving him a week with no interruptions, save a nightly ethnic dinner in front of the fire.

She had gone shopping and stocked the pantry with food and wine.

"The phone didn't ring once because everyone thought we were gone," Hal Heatwole said.

After they married in 1955, the Heatwoles moved to Michigan, where Hal Heatwole pursued his Ph.D. and Audry Heatwole took graduate classes.

They relocated to Puerto Rico for six years, then spent 25 years in Australia. That's where the Heatwole children grew up; they still live there with their own families.

It was in Australia that Audry Heatwole got interested in pottery. An elementary teacher by training, she took a course at a technical college to learn to work with porcelain, then spent six months as an apprentice at a pottery in London.

In Japan, she studied with a master potter, learning about globular-shaped vases in Japanese. In four months, she spoke but a half hour of English.

In 1991, Hal Heatwole accepted a job as head of the zoology department at N.C. State University. Audry Heatwole taught courses in glazing at the college and exhibited her work, often glazed in pastels, especially pinks and purples, at craft fairs.

At a Korean pottery workshop at the N.C. State Crafts Center, she met Susan Luster. Luster had recently decided to become a professional potter.

Luster planned to enroll in Central Carolina Community College's new program in professional pottery making, but Heatwole talked her out of it. Instead, she offered to be Luster's teacher.

Heatwole taught her how to mix glazes and how to set up a studio; she taught Luster about throwing and about forming.

"Audry was the queen of glazes," Luster wrote in a remembrance after Heatwole died. "She made pots to glaze them."

Heatwole never stopped working. The week before she died, she finished designing an abstract mural in shades of blue and installed it on her porch.

Her husband sees it every day.

* * *

Audry Heatwole is survived by her husband, two sons and two grandchildren.