Back in 2004 I came in contact via letter from a woman in San Francisco who needed some genealogical assistance with her early San Bernardino family, John Milton and Helen Millson Morris, who arrived there in 1874. I was volunteering my time in the local library’s history room and with the amazing archives available in their California Room, I suggested to her that if at all possible she might want to come down and see for herself what all was at hand. She did, and I met her there. From that first contact, she and I knew we would be good friends.
Her name is Nancy, and the internet has made possible a long-distance friendship that has grown almost as easily as if we lived in the same town. As the more advanced genealogy researcher I have shepherded her through her own beginning research and she is now returning the favor to others. And she, being a Registered Parliamentarian, has reawakened my long-dormant interest in parliamentary procedures and helped me work up revised bylaws for the Corona Genealogical Society locally that I am associated with.
We have lots in common; she worked for the State Department and traveled through eastern Europe and the middle east. Much of what I discovered in Turkey during our time there is duplicated in the places she has been, and we both share a love of food from that region. She shares with me the birds she finds as she walks daily around Stowe Lake in San Francisco; I keep her posted with the seasonal appearance of Archie Grosbeak and his wife at my bird-feeder. She received the first photo I took of the sharpshin hawk that lit on my porch quite unexpectedly last summer.
Both of us are avid readers and we swap our views of books read and we compare what we’ve just put on our “to read” lists. We share the trials and tribulations of apartment dwellers, absent newspapers on the doorstep, noisy neighbors, and “what we are going to do today” scenarios.
But best of all, we occasionally are able to see each other. Three times since 2004 she has come to the Southern California area to act as a parliamentarian for groups she works for. And in her free time we arrange to get together. Just this past weekend she was in Los Angeles for the Music Teachers Association of California’s yearly meeting. The meetings, over a period of three days, were held at a hotel near the LAX, so to be handy I drove in and bunked with my daughter. As soon as Nancy’s duties were over each day, I picked her up and we took off to see what we could see.
Nancy was born in Los Angeles and graduated from UCLA. From there on, her life was spent elsewhere. She and I looked at the old places she lived; I showed here how the town has changed. We photographed her standing in front of the house her folks lived in when she was born. But mostly our best time was when we had a meal and could spend some time afterwards talking. And did we talk! Jerry wonders how women can spend five hours at a stretch talking, but we just can. The outdoor eating area at the Beverly Center Souplantation provided a wonderful lunch and setting for our Sunday afternoon visit. The previous day it was Mimi’s yummy restaurant in Torrance that provided the setting.
Good friends are not always easy to come by. There has to be a meeting of the minds as well as the spirit to really cement friendships, and often life goes by too fast for such things to happen. Finding Nancy in my life, both in person and online, has been a real serendipity for me. This friendship now is in its sixth year and going strong. I sign off my e-mails with “BF” – which stands for Best Friend, which she truly is. We decided that the next get-together should be up her way. She has much to show me up there – but even if we didn’t “see” anything, whenever the time comes we know we’ll have much more to talk about, and so much fun doing it!
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