This is our story, however coincidental or destined to be, it is true. We met in 1976 when my family moved into her neighborhood during the middle of my 7^th grade school year. In first week of riding the school bus I'd noticed her sitting with her friends, some of whom I already knew (since I didn't change schools, just neighborhoods). I thought that she was very pretty, but I was already spoken for at the time. They were talking about the new guys who just moved in, the really cute one (my brother David) and his brother Jeff. I was used to that because he looked kinda like John Travolta at the time, and all of the girls just loved him. But she seemed to notice me, at least a little. Later I found out that she had broken her arm in my yard about a year before we moved in. While we were in junior high and high school we became pretty good friends but never dated. She dated my friends and I dated her friends.

We drifted apart when I dropped out of school and didn't see each other that often. Oh occasionally around the neighborhood we'd run into each other, since she did live only about 5 or 6 houses up the block from me. One day, during her senior year in high school, I ran into her at a gas station just up the street from our house and aranged a "semi-date". Little did she know what she was in for! After knocking a few of her boyfriends out of the picture we ended up dating steady for around 2 years before we became engaged to be married.

During our engagement I joined the Navy and she was attending college at Lander. Tammie planned our wedding almost entirely on her own while I was away with the Navy. On December 17, 1988 we were married in Pensacola, Florida by a Justice of the Peace, because I couldn't get leave in time to get a marrage liscense in our state where the wedding was planned. But, we were married again 2 days later in South Carolina at the church where Tammie had made all of the formal arrangements using our Florida marrage liscense. (She says I married her twice so if I ever want out I'll need to divorce her twice) But, I'll never leave her...she's my best friend!

Remember that neighborhood we grew up together in? At present, my parents still live in the same house...the same place where Tammie broke her arm. Tammie's mother still lives in the same house...the same place I used to sit out front late at night talking with Tammie. And my grandmother lives in a house a few blocks away in the same neighborhood and my uncle Ray and aunt Irene live a few houses up from her...nice and cosy huh?

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