John 3:16 – Be thankful, grateful, patient, charitable, kind, and smile, as it is infectious. God Bless America; protect our president and the military!
My mother was due on Leap Day of a leap year in February of 1956, but in a rush to get here, I came 4 days early on the 25th. The fairly young Doctor McGuire brought me into this world then.
Zoom ahead to February 1980, when my wife also gave birth to our third child, and her due date was 2/29/80, another Leap Year. However, my daughter, we would later find out, had other ideas and was also in a hurry to get here, arriving 4 days early on 2/25/80. The weird part is that the doctor who brought her into this world was also Doctor McQuire. To this day the best birthday present ever. Like all our children and now grandchildren we have loved every day since: our daughter Kathleeen, a.k.a. Kate, Katie, or my Katidid!
In 2010, on a two-week land-and-cruise vacation to Alaska with my sister and late brother-in-law Joe, we flew several flights starting in Fairbanks and taking many excursions in and around Denali a.k.a. Mount McKinley e.g. Trip into the British Columbia and the Yukon Territory, Canada, touring the Sitka River to an Athabaskan Village, The Mahay Devil River Canyon Run (I would highly recommend), excursions to Caribou Crossing and to Orca Point. (More on that later).
Afterwards we picked up our Princess cruise portion for the last leg of the trip cruising down the Inside Passage, Glacier Bay, a tour of the town of Skagway, Ketchikan (zip lining) etc…, to our final destination landing in Vancouver for our flight back home.
It was one of these excursions to see Great Blue whales, seals, sea lions, otters, bears, and other wildlife, with a prepared fresh-salmon luncheon at a lodge on Orca Point that looked out to Kodiak Island. We were on a plexiglass-lined touring boat with seats inside and a deck that ran around it for proper viewing. It wasn’t very crowded throughout, as we were the second-to-last group of the touring season.
Two gentlemen were seated behind us on the ride out when one of them, as it turned out later, was Kevin O’Reilly. He was talking about Drexel Hill, PA, and the surrounding area. It struck us both as being odd here in Alaska, on an excursion in the middle of really nowhere, that you’d expect to meet someone from Delco of all places.
We engaged them in conversation, and as it turned out, he went to the same school as my wife, and his sister, Maureen, dated a friend of ours whom she later married and divorced. The odd thing is she was the Real-estate agent who sold us the house we were living in at the time. That’s my story… Go Figure!
What’s your coinkydink story..do share?
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