NORVA Business Rally

We took our trailer to the annual NORVA Unit Business Rally in Williamsburg last weekend. Our good friend, Elaine, passed the president's gavel on to Paul, who was assuming the presidency for a second time. Elaine, with the support of husband, Lloyd, has done a fabulous job leading our Northern Virginia Airstream unit during the past year. We are especially proud because we recruited them into the Airstream lifestyle a few years ago. They started with a 1996 trailer, which had been owned by one of our retiring members. This year they upgraded to a sparkling new 30 foot coach with all the bells and whistles. To add icing on the cake, they recently bought a new fire engine red diesel GMC 2500 pickup. Now that's what we call Airstreaming!

It was timely to hold the business rally in Williamsburg, which is close to Jamestown. The latter historical community is celebrating it's 400th anniversary. Our rally wagon master, Jack (top left), wisely scheduled lots of free time for us to be able to tour the Tidewater Area. To really appreciate America, one must tour Jamestown and Williamsburg. The statue to the left is that of Captain John Smith. In the background is the lovely old chapel, where weddings are still held. They are continuing to find valuable artifacts at Jamestown which verify the events and lifestyle of those harsh early years.

Visiting Andrea's Family in Salem, MA

A major reason we decided to travel to the Northeast for our anniversary celebration was to see our daughter, Andrea, her husband David, and our grandson, Holden. We had not seen them since November 2005, and we knew this would be the last time to visit them before moving South. We stayed at the guest quarters at Hanscom Air Force Base. Holden, age 11, is so bright and fun to be with, but his chronic seizures preclude their traveling much.

We had offered each of our kids their choice of many of our furniture items, and Holden wanted the grandfather's clock that had once belonged to Gloria's parents. We delivered the clock, but not without mishap. After getting it set up, it ran fine, but it would not chime correctly. After employing a clock expert, the old clock is doing it's thing once again.

One of the highlights of the visit was learning how to play bocce ball. We kept changing team members, but it seemed that the winning team was always the one that had Holden as it's "captain." He had the uncanny ability to throw the ball in the best spot to get a scoring roll. The worse the terrain, the better he placed the ball.

After our visit with Andy's family, we drove back to Front Royal, where we had had our Airstream parked all summer. After a couple of days rest, we returned to Vienna for the daily grind of packing, staging our home and preparing to move. We have had lots of lookers, but no offers so far. Our agent, Vickie, holds an open house every other Sunday.

Albany New York

After a night in Cooperstown, where we stayed in a quaint motel overlooking a lovely lake, we traveled on to Albany. We chose a downtown hotel which would be convenient to the Capitol. Our delectable anniversary night dinner was served at Tono's, and it could not have been more perfect. The next day, we took a walking tour of the Capitol area. The old city hall was one of the highlights in addition to the uniquely elegant capitol building itself.

Happy 50th Wedding Anniversary

If you go back to our post in May, you will see that our five wonderful children gave us a trip to Hawaii for our 50th Anniversary (September 7, 1957). We met during our junior year at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) in a child psychology class. The studies must have helped, because our kids turned out well. All are college grads, all are married to their original spouses, all call themselves Christians, and all have lovely, intelligent children (no prejudice here). What really helped under gird our family was the hand of the Holy Spirit on each of us for these terrific, eventful 50 years.

We graduated in June 1957 and were married three months later at Prout Chapel (see photo) on the BGSU campus. Jerry's major was sociology with a minor in psychology. Gloria earned two degrees--one in business administration and one in business education.

With all of the stress connected with tying to sell our home in this difficult market and with our projected move to Texas on October 31, Gloria asked to delay the Hawaiian trip. So instead of exercising our gift, we elected to head northeast to New York and Boston for a short celebration. Our first stop was the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. This is not exactly a honeymoon location, but it was Jerry's lifelong dream to see the place of the legends of his childhood and youth. It should be added that Gloria is an even bigger sports buff.