The Boy From Anna, Ohio

Here I am at Anne Guerin's birthday party at the Fairfax Country Club having some fun with the boy from Anna, Ohio. The first time we met I said I was originally from a small town in Ohio. He said I'm originally from a small town in Ohio. Then I said I'm from such a small town in Ohio that I'm dead sure you have never ever even heard of it. He then said well please tell me the name of the town and when I said Russia, Ohio he said yes I have heard of i! My high school is Anna and we played your high school in basketball and baseball in the fifties and sixties. Then we both marveled at what a small world it is sometimes.

This nice gentleman from Anna is a retired Air Force Colonel and Air Force Pilot and his name is Gerald Westerbeck. I know that some of you Ohio folks must know some of the Westerbecks in and around Anna, Ohio. Gerald Westerbeck even spent many years in the Air Force stationed at Wright Patterson Air Force Base close to Dayton, Ohio. After retiring from the Air Force Gerald has gone on to a military consulting career with Logistics Management Institute and he currently lives in Oakton, Virginia.

We started talking about how we keep up with the news from back home in Ohio. Gerald said he always reads the Sidney Daily News, especially the sports page and the obituary page, Me too, me too, I replied. I just might recognize a name in the obituary column I exclaimed. And then I told him that I had hoped he would be at Anne's party because I had printed out a website for him that I knew he would enjoy reading on the internet: the very famous Fish Report. I showed him my printout and pointed out all the neat newspapers and Ohio sports sites listed on the front page of the Fish Report. I then pointed out all the cool sites about Russia, Ohio and St. Remy Catholic Church on the front page of the Fish Report. Why my golly you can even go to my blog from the Fish Report! It is listed as Joann's Blog.

Then the boy from Anna High School and the girl from Russia Local High School decided to pretend that they were really in a rage over the last Anna-Russia basketball game. So we took two dinner knives from the table and pretended to stick it to each other.
The only problem was that we were standing there forever while my husband figured out how to take our photo with my camera! Just look at us! Oh, goodness gracious, this is going on way too long. Wouldn't you hate to be a movie star and keep posing for all those pics?

I was ready to hand the camera to my girlfriend Joyce who was sitting at the table looking at us and laughing out loud. I also admit that a few other folks at this birthday brunch were looking at us strangely and wondering what in the world was going on with those two and the knives! Judy Westerbeck who grew up in Dayton and is Gerald's wife was one of those folks giving us very strange looks.

Finally my husband Jack said that he had figured out my camera and had taken a couple of pics of Gerald and I so we could relax now and put down our knives.

And so we did.

Note: Come back here tomorrow and I will tell you about Jack's first boss in Virginia who was from Bloomer, Ohio. That's right, there is a town in Ohio called Bloomer and it always makes me think of lady's bloomers, ahem, underpants.