Nature Lovers
Mary Jane & Bert
In the spring of 1993, Mary Jane and several others were in the volunteer room chatting about a trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands scheduled for that summer with Mary Jane as co-leader. Bert decided he wanted to go, and his daughter urged him to "Go for it." She knew that her father was having a hard time adjusting to his loss.
"So he went," Mary Jane laughed as she told the story. Although she vaguely remembers seeing Bert at the Nature Center, she didn't really know him. He had no one to room with, so he had his tent to himself. Marty, the other leader, sort of mothered him.
"Everyone had an opportunity to practice snorkeling first. Then the group swam off to Water Lemon Key, which was out in the bay. I knew I wasn't a strong enough swimmer to go, so I stayed on the beach. By this time I knew Bert hadn't had a lot of experience. But as I waited, I looked out to sea and saw to my consternation a figure in Bert's bright red trunks on the island. The tide was turning, and I saw him start to come back. Before long he started to struggle, and then one of the big guys in the group towed him back to land. That was when I first really noticed him.
"Bert was so excited about the trip, he just blossomed. After we got home he called and asked if I'd go out to dinner. We had to rummage around to find a time as I still have a pretty full schedule. When we went out, we sat and talked until the restaurant closed."
Frank & Nancy Keller
Arizona
Sometimes kids do know best! Nancy had been a widow for more than six years. She dated a little, but she really wasn't interested in a blind date. She was content with her life the way it was. Her son-in-law, husband of daughter Linda, had a golfing buddy Frank, who had lost his wife several months before. Linda kept hounding her mother to go out with Frank until she finally said, "Okay, I'll go out once, but don't expect anything to come of it.
Frank recently retired from the newspaper business really didn't like living alone. "I enjoyed someone to have a drink with and to hold, but I didn't plan to marry again----to make that commitment."
the blind date was to take place at a golfing dinner party. But what the match makers didn't know was that Frank had a plan of his own. He called Nancy. "I'm uneasy about this blind date in front of the group," he said. "Let's get together now and have dinner." She agreed.
Irvin & Shirley Little
Michigan
Love at first sight! It can happen at any age. It happened to Irvin and Shirley at Christmas time, 1998. She was 65; he was 63.
They met at Shirley's church on Sunday. As in all good romance books, they looked across the room, their glances met, their lives were forever changed. There was one problem. They still had to meet. But never fear, help was at hand.
"I had been peeking at him in church," said Shirley with a coquettish smile. "He was sitting across the aisle. I wasn't going to reach out and grab him."
Don & Lois Jandernoa
Michigan
Don and Lois worked in the same office building for 27 years, occasionally saying hello as they passed each other in the lobby. Lois was an executive with a major charitable organization, Don a top insurance agent. while they had never formally met, they did vaguely recognize each other.
In the spring of 1995, eight months after Don's wife died, they found themselves on an elevator together. They exchanged hellos. "I didn't know her name, but was impressed with her beautiful smile," Don said. "She got off on the fifth floor and I rode up to my office on the ninth floor. I immediately found my office manager who knew everyone in the building and asked who the woman with the beautiful smile was. He replied that her name was Lois and then told me her last name.
"I went immediately to the City Directory, and I noticed that she lived in a nice neighborhood." He wrote down her address and telephone number, but it took Don several weeks to work up the courage to call her one Sunday evening ." Do you remember me?"he asked her. "Would you have lunch with me tomorrow?"