About Dennis & Judi

Our Personal Love Story

Judi & Dennis

Pretty much everybody we meet assumes Judi and I have been married, like so many other folks our age, for many decades. We have not. Having connected (re-connected?) later in life, we just recently celebrated our 11th anniversary.

We were raised in the same idyllic small town of Brockville, Ontario, on the Canadian side of the beautiful St. Lawrence River, so we knew - or knew of - each other. But Judi attended Catholic school, I went to public schools; she lived on the west side of town, and I lived on the east; and Judi was a bit younger than me, so our interactions back then were minimal, but significant.

For example, Judi's best friend dated and eventually married my foster brother, and there were two other very memorable events that brought us together.

The first was when Judi saved me from me, and probably saved my life, when I pulled the dumbest stunt of my life. I'll spare you some of the gory details, but the Seaway Skyway Bridge, a mile-long, wide-open span that is high enough for ocean-going vessels to pass beneath it spans the St. Lawrence River between Johnstown, Ontario and Ogdensburg – 'The Burg" - New York. Like an idiot, I tried to walk over it one night after partying in the 'Burg', which was a notorious watering hole for young Canadians back then: a sacred right-of-passage for 16-and-17-year-olds to head over to the Burg to party on the weekend.

It being late November in that part of the world, a blizzard blew in before I got halfway across, and I didn't make it past the highest point.

The toll booth operator had alerted the first vehicle to cross the bridge behind me that a pedestrian was on the bridge and the police were on their way. It just happened to be Judi and a bunch of Canadian kids in that car, and when they found me unconscious in the snow, and she recognized me, they smuggled me through the border thinking they would keep me from getting into trouble.

It was a kind thought, but it didn't work, and the night did not end well for me. The authorities knew that I had left the U.S. side on foot, but I never arrived on the Canadian side, so they assumed that I had somehow gone over the side.

I won't even try to describe the trouble I was in, but the point here is that Judi, whom I would marry almost 60 years later, saved me that night.

On another occasion, Halloween Night 1963, we met again at a huge annual dance at the local armories and danced most of the evening together. Nothing came of it, though, and we still often discuss why. We've concluded that her girlfriends warned her to stay away from me because I was a little wild and had just been 'Dear Johned' by my long-time girlfriend. Plus, I was in my first year at university in another town, and she had already met her first husband.

Judi got married a few months later and moved to the United States, while I returned to university, and we lost touch.

Judi returned to Canada and ultimately became a career Government of Canada employee and lived through the usual tribulations of life for the next 45 years.

I graduated university, married a Brockville girl, had two kids, divorced, and moved to the States. I lived all over Canada and the United States, changed jobs too often, traveled the world, and was generally off-kilter until February 4th, 2010.

On that date both of our lives changed forever. I was divorced, again, unhappily living and working in Houston, Texas, and Judi, after losing her closest friend to a long battle with cancer, had just moved back to Brockville to be close to family.

On that morning Miss Daisy, our beautiful long-haired Chihuahua, came into her life, just a few hours before I spotted Judi on a Facebook site hosted by a friend who was the former owner of a dance club we all frequented as kids. She was still a looker, and I sent her a message saying simply: "Hi Judi, still hot I see. How have you been?" Such clever repartee after 45 years!

She immediately replied: "Thanks, I think???"

A year later we were married on the top level of the Stratosphere in Vegas. 10 years after that, she has her U.S. citizenship, and we live, along with Miss Daisy, two other little dogs and a big old black cat, in a comfortable golf community in Florida. Just a bit of a cliche, but it works for us.

That's our story, almost, but there is one anecdote of note. Just after Christmas in 2010, Judi and I were driving back to Houston from Brockville when we passed through Ohio on a cold rainy night, and Judi started crying for no apparent reason. When I questioned her, she said that her child from that first marriage, her child she hadn't seen in 45 years, was somewhere nearby, and closer to her at that moment than he had been since he was a baby.

I knew the story but hadn't understood the depth of her pain until that moment. It broke my heart, and I decided to find and contact her son. I understood the risks, but knew she needed closure one way or the other.

I found him, communicated with him, and one night a few days later, she received a message on Facebook that made her shriek. When I raced to her to see what was wrong, I found her crying uncontrollably, and she blubbered: "I got a message from my son!"

I thought she meant her second son in Canada and was a little confused at her emotional reaction to a message from him given that they were in regular contact.

"No," she said almost hysterically though her tears, "My oldest son!"

Many a tear has been shed over that reunion, and while they may never be as close as they would have been without that 45-year separation, she is his mother and he is her son, and that's a bond that can never be broken. They have gotten together on several occasions, talk regularly, and I think she feels fulfilled now. I hope her son feels the same, and I sense that he does.

As they say, in a lifetime of many mistakes, helping them get back together made up for a few of mine for me. That's our happy ending.