It hardly seems like 50 years and when I wonder where did the time go, I look at our children and grandchildren. They mark the passage of time as surely as the rings on a tree trunk define its age.
A mutual friend introduced us and warned me that Edgar is a really nice guy but he is very shy and quiet. My mother scoffed at that description. She knew that a successful salesman could not be shy and quiet. She was right.
It's difficult, if not impossible, to rank our experiences over 50 years, and to include all the memorable ones. We are proud parents of three successful, talented, and accomplished children and seven grandchildren who are finding themselves and searching for their identities while trying to carve out their position in life.
We have met and so far conquered our medical misfortunes and each bout made us stronger, both as individuals, a couple, and a family.
Once Edgar retired, we traveled and traveled and traveled - from Key West through the rest of Florida, to Washington DC, Virginia, and Maryland to New York and through most of New England. From Puerto Rico to Montana and Yellowstone National Park, to Washington state, Oregon, and California, and to Alaska and Hawaii.
Our second careers as photo journalists gained us interviews with usually silent people like Col. Norman Vaughn, to people who are in history books like Wally Hickel and Alexander Haig (both in Nixon's cabinet), members of the WWII 442nd/100, Tuskegee Airmen, and the Original Flying Tigers.
We appeared on radio and TV from CNN in Hawaii to Philadelphia-area local TV and radio. We sat down with governors and mayors, newspaper editors, TV and movie stars, hall of fame sports figures. We even attended rehearsals of the Pro Bowl cheerleaders and local cheerleaders too.
We produced music festivals in Montana and Washington state, attended concerts, music festivals, rock and roll gigs, ballets, operas. The city didn't matter, only the music. And dramas, comedies, and musicals in theaters. Among the plays we saw "Love Letters" three different times over the years, in three different venues.
We won prizes for journalism and photography, appeared on Baywatch Hawaii and were guest lecturers in high school journalism classes. I wrote and published four crime novels that take place in Hawaii. Robert Wagner said that they would have been perfect for "Hart to Hart" if it hadn't been canceled.
We survived today's "end of the world prophecy" and can't wait to see what our next adventures will be.
