Friendships

 

I got the neatest gift today!!!  It all started in 1968…. two years after I graduated from high school.  I moved back to Cincinnati and got my first job at Ohio National Life Insurance.  The very first friend I made there was a lady named Diane Kopec.  She was a couple of years older than me and much more worldly, and we hit it off just grand!!!

                            Diane Kopec - 1981

Five years later she was supposed to travel to Alaska with me, but at the last minute she backed out as she decided to move to Maine with her then boyfriend.  So, she moved to Maine and I moved to Alaska and we stayed in touch via letters (you know, that stuff you used to write before email and text messages!!).

Well, 53 years later Diane and I are still friends, but now we communicate more by emails.  I had told her recently that due to my time being confined by the pandemic that I had started writing my memoir.  A few weeks later she wrote saying that she and her partner were preparing to down size for an eventual move to somewhere they didn’t have to shovel snow.  She was going through boxes and found letters I had sent to her while I lived in Alaska and eventually Guam!!!  Did I want them?  OMG YES!!!

The letters arrived today, 14 of them dated from 7/74-9/78!  I am slowly reading through them.  Not in any hurry because I am enjoying them so much!!!  But sitting here at my desk got me thinking about friendships…. How incredibly special and wonderful they are.  And who are they?

I’m thinking about those folks with whom I grew up
….one way or the other.  My very first friend?  No doubt was Denny Fogel, my cousin who was born 6 months after me and whose mother, my Aunt Bunny, babysat me a lot before I started school.

Next two friends with whom I grew up, Rik McNeill and Nancy Trick Richey.  Both have been significant players in my life.  Nancy, whom I lost last April, can never be replaced.  Rik…continues with love and affection (XOXO) to wander through my life resurfacing wherever and whenever needed. 

Then there is Karen Specht no doubt a kindred spirit and sister from a past life.  Our adventures from roaming through France, riding mules into the Grand Canyon and great explorations in Costa Rica are just a few of those times. 

My most memorable mentor and precious confidant, Frances Crotty, I have no doubt I will meet again some far distant day in the future. 

There are many, many more, but these are the major players and I am so grateful to each and every one of them.  They created my life, shaped it, formed it and allowed me to roam through it. 

Blessed be the friendships of my life.