I keep checking Facebook every few minutes, which is silly, but suddenly I'm finding a lot of long lost friends and family members there. Fun!!! There are still a few frustrations:
A) I have one cousin, just one, who (when we were much younger) I actually knew well enough to call her a friend and I can't find her. That's the trouble with women: they change their last names. I know she was married at least once but I have no idea to whom. So hey -- if anyone out there in my vast viewing audience (HA!) knows a woman of 59/60 whose maiden name was Cheryl Kartchner, who was from Ontario, OR and whose father was involved in some sort of managerial fashion with Ore-Ida Farms, and who reportedly was living somewhere in California (small target!) in the 70's/80's/maybe-now's ... I'm lookin' for her!
B) When I lived in Mesa in the late 90's I was close friends and partners-in-crime with one Mary Hungerford (Luebke, among other things), who lived in Phoenix. I would LOVE to find her again and I'm finding it puzzling and sort of alarming that I can't. She was always planning and plotting and organizing things and I would THINK she'd be all over the internet. But she isn't. I found her elderly parents, who may or may not still be around, and I guess I'm going to send a card to her name at their address and see what happens.
C) I haven't yet been able to locate Cynthia Peden, also from Phoenix. She provided me with some massage clients and random work, and I helped her a little with her website back before I quite understood what a website was. We swam in her pool and did meditations and had little luncheons featuring edible flowers.
D) John Tice was a friend from back in Germany, he and his wife Gloria, and we saw them off and on after the Army when we lived in Provo and they lived in SLC. He contacted me for some reason right before I left NJ, him living in Southern CA by then, divorced. Since his parents were in Phoenix I had a couple of opportunities in Mesa to visit with him and his new wife, and then lost track of them again a year or two later. Like Mary and also Cynthia, he's someone who had his fingers in so many pies you'd think he'd be easy to find on the Internet, but so far, no.
And then there was this -- certainly no joke intended -- dead end: Joy Waugh O'Donnell, my old best-pal across the miles, the little round woman from the 48 Hours show about Paul McCartney. I have no memory of how I managed to begin communicating with her since that was way back before Google, but I did. She lived in a suburb of Indianapolis and I lived in Merchantville, NJ, and we wrote LETTERS (that's how long ago this was) and talked on the phone a lot. When she was given an extra free trip to England won by our other Middle-Aged McCartney Maniac (and I still have the tote bag!) friend Patty Selke from Conn. in a contest run by a radio station in NY ... (pause and breathe ...), she gave it to me. The ticket. I don't remember how it came about that Joy had already bought her own ticket at the same time Patty was going, but she had, and I met them in London. They went on up to Liverpool and I went down to Rye by myself, which is where I wanted to be. And as cool of her as that was ("Here, have a trip to England"), I was even more blown away one day when my husband went missing and I called her to sob about how scared I was and she said, "If he's not back by 8 tonight, call me back and I'll jump in the car and come stay with you." He showed up right around 8, but I was just stunned that someone would do that, that someone would just come halfway across the country at the drop of a hat, for a friend. Since then I've seen several examples of that and I'm a lot more mobile myself, but that was the first. Joy wasn't always easy to get along with and I lost touch with her entirely some time after I moved to Arizona in '95. Now we have Google, and I found her. She died in October of 2007. I located an old arch-rival of hers, Beatles-wise, a mega-fan photographer named Jorie Gracen, and I emailed her to see what she knew. Joy died of a heart attack while undergoing surgery for something else, either Jorie wasn't sure what or it was something related to Joy's diabetes and I blocked it out because there are some things I do not want to ponder. She also told me that Patty died of the breast cancer she had when I knew her, several years ago. I sort of knew Patty wasn't going to make it and I had tried during that last year in NJ to make a quick trip up to visit her, but I wasn't able to get my ducks rowed up. Sad.
But mostly, this series of people popping up all over the country and *friending* me has been fun and exhilarating. And I've smiled much watching Micah connecting with his cousin Shelby and Hannah connecting with the kids from Maple Terrace and on and on. Still waiting for Amanda. And Jonah. You guys out there?
4 comments:
I think I'm the one trying to make the most connections with the kids from Maple Terrace. I found the Maldanado-bells..both of whom don't remember me..which makes me feel sad. The Henricksons..who remember our family..but not really me..which also makes me sad because Katrin and I had so much fun back in those days. I just found Jacki Haddon (and that one took me a while, too) and I'm waiting to see if she remembers me. Rachel isn't on there from what I can see..though the O'Loughlins (sp?) are..but I haven't befriended any of them. I found who I thought was Jessica Fedderman (sp?)..but she said she never lived in Merchantville. I'm trying, for sure. It just sucks that since we were all so young and a lot of these kids moved at young ages..they don't really remember anything except for that they lived in Merchantville once and I'm like..dang, I must have a great memory because how do you NOT remember all of that great stuff?!
Sorry to hear about "we're going to see Paul, waahhhh" Joy..that's so sad. But that line will forever live on in our family.
Have you tried to look up Mary's son? I forget his name..but I've found that if I can find a parent..I can usually find the kids. So I'm sure it works the other way around, too.
I've found a lot of people from Merchantville too, and from Moorestown Ward. Several of the Thornburgh kids befriended me, and Sally Mellor, and Nadine Jensen. It is a lot of fun.
I'm so sorry about your friends, Mom. That is a heartbreaking story. Hope you find the others.
Good idea, Abby. Mary had about five different last names (from that many marriages) and her son's name is John. I *think* his last name was Lund. So I tried that and found a lot of John Lunds (many of them in Denmark) but not the right one. Haven't given up yet!
Glad to see that some people are enjoying facebook the way it was probably intended. I don't get on there much. Maybe it would be different for me if I'd moved away from where I grew up, but instead, I go on there and see so many people from HS that I don't have much interest in reconnecting with. So sad!
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