A Few More Lasts & Firsts

A final full weekend in Southeastern PA and we are invited by many to share good food, great friends, and memories.  Many, many memories.

Last week we spent a wonderful evening with some very close neighbors we first got to know almost 40 years ago.  Some of the folks from Becker Road, Hempfield Township, Lancaster County PA, near Root's Market, doncha know now.  Don and Pat Miller, Rich and Shirley Wagner, and Judy Mellinger.  

We lived together on that little 100 yard long two lane between rte 72 and Graystone Road for 20 years.  And we saw each other through some tearful and some very happy times.  That's just what good friends do.  Ask them, or us, what a raging squirrel, a 15' deep sinkhole, dry wells and 12' snow drifts can do to build friendships!

  Aunt Jane McDowell is 92 this coming August but when you see her you'd say she was 75 if she was a day.  She lives in a lovely home in a quiet senior community in Mount Joy but she flies all over the country to see her kids, grandkids, great and great-great grandchildren.  Told recently by another senior that they would be afraid to get lost in an airport on their own her response was, "Why? Can't you read signs?"


Some of our Hope Church friends will remember the year of Bible Study that took place in Vinny Lubrano's small A-Frame Pizza restaurant in Douglassville several years ago.  That experience started a great friendship between many of Hope's folk and Vinny, who counts among his greatest achievements serving meals to men and women on Italian merchant ships, surviving several sinkings and especially serving on the tall ship, Amerigo Vespucci for a time when she sailed as the Italian Navy's square rigged sail training ship. Now serving his delicious pizza's in the new Birdsboro, PA VINNY's, he has taken on a new partner to help run his Douglassville restaurant to share in the rewards of his growing business.

We met Shelley and Moire Zielke in 1988 when my work with Rotary High School Youth Exchange in the Lancaster, PA club, brought us together.  Moire was heading for a year in Austria and we were hosting Maurits VanderWoude from Holland in our home.  The next year our daughter Jennifer spent a year with Rotary in Belgium. We met Shelley and Moire this past week at Shelley's home in Mount Joy where we shared memories and good times till late into the evening.

Today we spent a great afternoon with the family of Debbie & Rick Boyer.  Mona met Debi when they worked together at Joan Shear's Beauty Salon in Centerville, Pa. in 1970, a year after Mona and I were married. Mona ceased her beautician's career soon after when the constant effort of standing in one place began to tell on her curving spine. Debbie has been Mona's hairdresser ever since and today she and Rick hosted us and Nan Horn from Hope Church, and the Boyer's daughter April and son-in-law Alex to a great picnic at their home on Fruitville Pike in Lancaster, Pa.

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This week to come will be 7 days of alot of lasts, and firsts, for us. My last Hope Church Celebration Team and Staff Parish Team meetings. Our first fill up of diesel fuel for QUO since bringing her north in January (100 gallons of diesel X a current $4.05 per =...... alot at 8 miles to the gallon).

Our last Thursday/Friday weekend in 17 years and our first Sunday setting the alarm later than 7am. Hope is combining the 8:30 and 11:00 am services into one at 10:00 am so all who wish to may join in my last service followed by a congregational potluck supper at about 11:30-12:00 pm... depending when I decide to finish preaching.  :)

Our last farewell and God speed to and from the marvelous congregation and friends of Hope Church as we pull out for parts west and our first night on the trail: Shanksville, PA, where, if all goes as planned next morning we will pay our respects to the dead heroes of Flight 93 in their nearby memorial. They left their homes on the morning of September 11, 2001, never suspecting they would be entering history as the first response against Al Quaida after that heinous group's killing of over 3,000 civilians in New York and Washington DC.

 The last words over the cell phone the passengers had used to say their goodbyes to their families, "Let's Roll.", as they surged forward with only fists against knives to keep their plane from being used as another suicide bomb has been the battlecry of many a soldier, sailor, airman and marine; policeman, fireman, EMT and other Early Emergency Responder ever since. It is ours as well. Not in a charge of violence, but in a drive to learn about the two great countrys of our amazing continent, and as many of their wonderful people as possible in our remaining ambulatory years.

It was about two weeks after the attacks that Burger King Restaurants gave away millions of  little rectangular window clings to commemorate and memorialize the sacrifice of so many, and unknowingly the coming sacrifice of so many more in the name of American freedom and justice. How amazing that such a simple item as a window cling has been with us through 4 vehicle front windows, and now rests firmly in the lower right corner of QUO's right windshield panel. The flag still flies bright as ever in all these 13 years, and hopefully for many more.  The first stop on the journey of the rest of our lifetimes could not be more appropriate than Shanksville, Pa.

Lets all keep rolling together, no matter the distance between us.

-Ken