After retiring, Neal and Fumiko eventually moved back to Pennsylvania where Neal died on June 9, 2017.

Fumiko had been born on Okinawa on December 13, 1929, where her mother died in childbirth, and her grandfather died when she was eight years old. During the war, she lived in a cave and endured an internment camp after the war in her early teens. After her husband Neal died, Fumiko suffered a stroke and became partially paralyzed as well as blind from macular degeneration and went to live in Homewood at Plum Creek where she was able to make new friends during her final years. She died on February 17, 2022.

I lead with that so that I don’t have to end this piece on a downer.

Sometime in the 1990s, Neal and Fumiko returned to Fumiko’s country of origin and had a traditional Japanese wedding picture taken because they could not afford it when they were younger.

Late one evening in 2002 I got a call from Kathy. Her parents 50th wedding anniversary was approaching and she wanted to give them a surprise party along the lines of what Donna and I had done a decade previously for our parents.

We had indeed pulled off a 50th anniversary party for our parents and surprised the dickens out of them, but as I told Kathy, most of the preparations had been made by Donna and our aunt Jane, as I was here in Philadelphia and the venue was more centrally located near both Jane and Allen and our parents. I had mainly done the invitations and things like that, and given that Kathy wanted  to have it more centrally located, i.e., not in Philly, I didn’t think I could be much help in arranging it.

In the event, Kathy, Gary, and their son Chris and his wife Cindy did manage to make the arrangements, so on July 14, 2002, we all gathered and waited for the couple to be surprised. I had a relatively new Kodak digital camera to take snapshots of the event (134 in all), so when Neal and Fumiko walked in, I was able to capture their surprise.

They really were surprised!

As they told Kathy, they were surprised because their 50th anniversary wasn’t due for another year until 2003.

Kathy countered with she figured that if she waited until their actual 50th, then they’d be expecting something and she couldn’t surprise them.

Actually she didn’t say that. She simply got the date wrong. She was only off by a year.