Debbie and I became friends back in our high school days, working together at Valleyfair! We became friends very quickly, I remember her sweet smile, always happy and bubbly personality…and of course her duck waddle that was so cute, think I may have had a little fun with her on that! Through the 3 summers we worked together, we hung out with our games group, doing stuff after work, going out to eat and my most vivid memory is going to a Styx concert together at the State Fair, I was with someone else, but would have rather sat by her! We always had a lot of fun together working and laughing and kidding around, she was the most fun gal in the department! I had a big crush on her, but she was always dating someone! We went our separate ways after Valleyfair and reconnected on Facebook a few years back, not knowing anything about her life over the past 30+ years. I enjoyed her posts of recipes, cat stories and Friday night Gopher hockey excitement…with the cat of course! I noticed she was out in Washington and was about to head out there with Sam to move him to his new apartment on to his next journey in the military, so I sent her a message and called her up to see if we could meet up! When we got in touch on the phone, it was like I had just talked to her recently, the same laugh and happy, bubbly personality!!! We met in Seattle for breakfast the day I was heading back and spent 3 to 4 non-stop hours of great conversation catching up on 35 years! We had an immediate connection and stayed in touch regularly for the next few months. We had our first official date on June 5th last year at Ciao Bella and the rest was history!!! She is the light in my life, I love her to death and can’t wait to spend the rest of my life together, enjoying every day together and planning our adventures to our kids across the country!!!

Tom and I met in July 1980 when I got a job thru a friend at ValleyFair, an amusement park south of the metropolitan area. Tom, safe to say, was a “big man on campus” there. Never a shortage of girls around him! For full disclosure, I was in a long line of admirers but also knew I was “not his type” (or thought). Really, we all ran with the same herd of kids that worked in the games department for 3 summers. I know Tom would agree, those were some of the best summers of our lives – pretty simple times. In September 1982, all of us parted ways with good lucks and let’s keep in touch; thinking of course we all would. After many years and experiences for us both, I found myself in WA in 2016 as a single professional working remotely out of my home for UnitedHealth Group. I enjoyed the Pacific Northwest and was as content as I thought I’d be until one day in January 2018, I received what I thought at the time, was a very random phone call and voicemail from someone I hadn’t seen or heard from in 36 plus years. Some social media investigating had Tom doing a bit of “looking up” as he was moving his son Sam, to Fort Lewis just outside of Tacoma. When I listened to the voicemail, I remember smiling because I recognized his voice without the need for him to tell me who it was! When I called back we truly picked up where we left off and talked for over a half hour. We decided to meet for breakfast when he came into town – which he may or may not elaborate on this part of the story. At the end of it all, and as his mom would say, serendipity had the final say in this reunion. It was obvious to both of us after several months of texts, late phone calls and many days spent in MN last summer, what kind of plan had been laid out for us even before we reconnected. My late mother told me there are three kinds of love in life and she was lucky enough to have the greatest love of her life the first and only time. Tom truly is, by her definition to me, the greatest love of my life.