Saturday, September 11, 2004
A little on the role I played in motivating Jamie to start this Blog...
It was July 4th weekend and my wife Allyson and I decided that rather than go away for the Holiday weekend, we would take day trips to nearby areas we had always wanted to visit. We had lived in Connecticut for about 10 years now, 7 years together as married people, and had always talked about visiting certain places that were in easy driving distance from our home in Westport.
The top 2 on our list were Watch Hill, RI and Litchfield County, CT. Our timing was very undefined, so we decided if we actually made it to Watch Hill, we would try to look up my relative James, with whom I had briefly spoken and emailed a few years back.
I believe we drove to Watch Hill on Saturday in the late morning; we have a friend with a home in nearby Hopkinton, so we had long heard how gorgeous it was in Watch Hill, but the town far exceeded our expectations. It is amazingly picutresque but also very personal and restrained in its charm. It is a real jewel and it was very clear why James had settled there.
Anyway, we had lunch, walked along the beach, and decided before starting the roughly 2 hour trip home to Westport to see if we could look up James. Allyson played a particularly key role at this point in the "re-uniting" of the Stollenwerck clan, as it was getting to be the late afternoon and I was a little nervous about possibly disturbing Jamie's Holiday and showing up announced-- but my brilliant wife said something like "dummy, when else are you going to have a chance like this, of course he will want to hear from you"-- and she was right as usual.
Jamie's number was listed in the book as was his address, so we drove towards his house and placed a call. As Jamie has written on this blog, he was home, he told us we had to immediately come in and visit, and we had a great time with him and Debbie. We learned about his kids, and subsequently I have been able to meet both Samantha and Adriane who are just fantastically personable, friendly, charming, talented people of whom Jamie is understandably and overwhelmingly proud.
Now my whole family is fired up about getting to know our relatives and sharing stories via this blog. More about and from them to follow.
Posted by Jeff Stollenwerck
¶ 10:41 AM
The top 2 on our list were Watch Hill, RI and Litchfield County, CT. Our timing was very undefined, so we decided if we actually made it to Watch Hill, we would try to look up my relative James, with whom I had briefly spoken and emailed a few years back.
I believe we drove to Watch Hill on Saturday in the late morning; we have a friend with a home in nearby Hopkinton, so we had long heard how gorgeous it was in Watch Hill, but the town far exceeded our expectations. It is amazingly picutresque but also very personal and restrained in its charm. It is a real jewel and it was very clear why James had settled there.
Anyway, we had lunch, walked along the beach, and decided before starting the roughly 2 hour trip home to Westport to see if we could look up James. Allyson played a particularly key role at this point in the "re-uniting" of the Stollenwerck clan, as it was getting to be the late afternoon and I was a little nervous about possibly disturbing Jamie's Holiday and showing up announced-- but my brilliant wife said something like "dummy, when else are you going to have a chance like this, of course he will want to hear from you"-- and she was right as usual.
Jamie's number was listed in the book as was his address, so we drove towards his house and placed a call. As Jamie has written on this blog, he was home, he told us we had to immediately come in and visit, and we had a great time with him and Debbie. We learned about his kids, and subsequently I have been able to meet both Samantha and Adriane who are just fantastically personable, friendly, charming, talented people of whom Jamie is understandably and overwhelmingly proud.
Now my whole family is fired up about getting to know our relatives and sharing stories via this blog. More about and from them to follow.
Posted by Jeff Stollenwerck
¶ 10:41 AM
