The Girls From Ames Part 12

Because Marilyn feels she has been helped, she's very open about the medications she's taking. She has warned the others that it's important to find the right dosages and the right regimen of medications. One antidepressant led her to gain twenty pounds, which isn't uncommon.

Marilyn also points out that depression can be part of the aging process, no different than high cholesterol or thyroid issues. She and her husband have jokingly changed the words to the song "The Wheels on the Bus": "The wheels on the bus start falling off, falling off, falling off, the wheels on the bus start falling off-at the age of forty!"

Marilyn believes that speaking frankly about her medications to the other girls can be a great service to them; maybe they'll see signs of depression in their own lives. "It's not an embarra.s.sment, because it's neurological. It's not something you can control by eating right and exercise," she says. The girls are generally open about how they've helped themselves through challenging times in their lives, whether it's Cathy talking about being in therapy or Marilyn talking about taking the antidepressant Effexor. The girls are pretty matter-of-fact when they're together, and it's comforting. "I'm not the only one opening a pillbox," Marilyn says.

In recent years, women's health proponents have singled out women like Marilyn as frontline soldiers in the battles against depression. The reason is this: Though 70 percent of women in a 2004 nationwide survey said they felt "depressed, stressed, anxious or sad" in the previous twelve months, only 27 percent of them talked to their doctors about this. So who do most of them talk to? Their girlfriends.

More than 60 percent of women who have signs of depression tell their friends how they're feeling, according to this survey by the National a.s.sociation of Nurse Pract.i.tioners in Women's Health. Given how women confide in each other, the organization created a program called "Girlfriends for Life: Helping Each Other Stay Healthy." The program was designed to raise awareness that friends can be crucial players in recognizing the symptoms of depression and encouraging those in crisis (or just suffering the blues) to get help. As program organizers put it: "Sometimes the only thing keeping a woman from falling over is the girlfriend right beside her."

Now that most of their kids are heading into their teens, the Ames girls spend some of their time at the reunion at Angela's trading tips on how best to connect with them. "I find they'll do a lot of good talking in the car, if you're quiet and listen to them," Sally says.

"I've read research about asking open-ended questions," Jane says. "You don't ask, 'Did you have a good day at school?' You need to say, 'Tell me about your math cla.s.s.' And you've got to get them when they're fresh, right home from school. If you wait until the end of the day, before they go to bed, they're not going to share as much-or at all."

Karla talks about her son, who likes to come home from school and go sit up in a tree in front of the house to think. When he climbs down from the tree, he's often ready for conversation with Karla or Bruce.

The girls swap stories about the sorts of questions their kids ask them. Karen tells of the day her son came home from sixth grade and said the gym teacher had been enlisted to give "the s.e.x talk" to students. "We're at the dinner table," Karen says, "and first he tells us that he saw a picture of a v.a.g.i.n.a. Then he has a question for us. He wanted to know: 'So how much comes out during an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n?'" Karen was impressed that her husband figured out a way to calmly answer the question. "He got the soap dispenser, squirted a little into his palm, and just said, 'That much.' "

Kelly tells the girls about her daughter Liesl's questions. Having two older brothers, and watching them get potty trained, Liesl learned early what a p.e.n.i.s was. Then one day at the supermarket, she wanted a candy bar and Kelly told her it had peanuts in it. "Her eyes got huge," Kelly recalls. "She said, 'Really? That candy bar has a p.e.n.i.s in it?' " More recently, as a teen, Liesl asked Kelly: "When you and dad were married, when did you have s.e.x?" Kelly answered: "When you were asleep." (It's a good answer, some of the other girls say, but it might just lead a kid to stay awake all night.) Because the girls live all over the country, they also compare geographical differences in their children. The Midwest contingent gets a kick out of the fact that Diana's daughter heads west from Arizona in the summer and goes to "surf camp" on the beaches of California. And here at the reunion, they're all taken with Angela's seven-year-old daughter, Camryn, and her Southern accent. Camryn is so poised as she asks polite questions about the girls' friends.h.i.+ps and talks about her own friends.

Meanwhile, those with older kids talk about how their offspring now give them unsolicited advice: "You're too old to wear a bikini." "You're too young to be complaining about how tired you are." "You're too judgmental, Mom!"

Diana tells a story about the ways in which daughters notice how their mother's bodies are declining. "My friend Barb in Arizona was sitting with her thirteen-year-old daughter," Diana says. "Her daughter wanted to snuggle with her, so she put her head down on my friend's chest. She kept lifting her head, putting it down. My friend asked her, 'What are you doing?' She said, 'Mom, where's your b.o.o.b?' So my friend told her, 'Hold on, honey. I think it's down here.' Then she readjusted herself, pulled herself up, and all was well." The girls roar at that story.

When the girls are together, questions are raised: How do they each view themselves as parents? Are they succeeding? Are their kids thriving? Are they happy being mothers?

"Parenting is rewarding but hard," says Jane. "My heart is definitely in it, but I'd give myself a B as a parent."

The girls talk about all the bad parents in the world. "OK," Jane says, "compared to a lot of what's out there, I'll give myself an A."

Given the often frenetic nature of their parenting lives-the struggles to stay on top of everything-the girls say they've found it easier over the years to forgive their own parents' deficiencies. Karen tells a story, dating back to middle school, about the day when she needed to bring in a baby photo of herself to cla.s.s. Because she was the fifth of five children in her household, there were far fewer photos of her. Her mother looked, but couldn't even find a baby photo of Karen. So she gave her a photo of her older sister, Barb.

"Mom, that's not me. It's Barb," Karen said.

"It's OK," her mother said. "You looked just like her when you were a baby."

The other girls laugh over this story, and then Cathy jokingly says, "My mom probably gave me a picture of my older brother. I'll talk about it in therapy."

The girls share stories of how they've found new reasons to appreciate their own parents now that they're adults. Angela tells about the day in 1979 when her dad came home and said he no longer would be working as the manager of the Gateway Center Hotel in Ames. (It would later become a Holiday Inn.) He couldn't bring himself to say he'd been fired. He just said he planned to find another job. Angela knew he'd likely need to look beyond Ames, and so she began crying, telling him she couldn't leave her friends, she just couldn't! Years later, her dad told her that seeing her reaction that day, and realizing how much she loved and needed the other girls in her life, he made a decision. He'd limit his job search to Ames. It was a selfless act for Angela's dad-limiting his own career because he had put his daughter's happiness first.

Conversations about motherhood lead naturally into conversations about fatherhood, and their husbands' strengths and deficiencies.

This Ames girls' reunion is lasting almost four days. That means their husbands back home are looking after twenty children on their own. The girls think this might be beneficial for both their kids and their husbands-offering one-on-one time without motherly interference.

Diana, Jane, Angela and Sally-who between them have eight daughters and no sons-say they hope a little bit of confiding is going on between their daughters and husbands while they're coc.o.o.ned here at the reunion.

These are not easy times for fathers and daughters. As diligent dads try to bond with daughters born in the 1990s, many are struggling. Across America, Daddy's little girl is growing up faster than ever-in a world of date-rape drugs and risque clothing-and fathers often respond by ignoring danger signals or by retreating to a life focused on their sons. Even before daughters are born, many fathers feel conflicted. A 2003 Gallup poll showed that 45 percent of men would prefer having a son if they had only one child, compared with 19 percent who'd prefer a daughter-a ratio little changed since 1941. And once a girl arrives, her parents are 6 percent more likely to get divorced than if she was a boy, according to a study by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Rochester. Parents with three daughters are about 10 percent more likely to get divorced than parents of three sons. In homes with teenaged girls, the likelihood of divorce doubles. (The reason dads with sons are less apt to divorce: They may feel a greater need to stick around as a male role model. They're also more comfortable around boys.) At the same time, reams of research show that girls who are close to their dads are less likely to be promiscuous, develop eating disorders, drop out of school or commit suicide.

For the most part, the Ames girls say their husbands are pretty good at connecting with their daughters, though the men will sometimes say, "You'd better go talk to your mother about that."

Like so many men, their husbands often feel most comfortable bonding through activities. "My husband and daughter play golf together," says Sally. Walking eighteen holes, a dad and daughter can discover a lot about each other.

Because most of their husbands arrived in the girls' lives after they left Ames, the men aren't especially close to each other. They are friendly and cordial, and they enjoy each other's company when they get together as a group. But they recognize that the relations.h.i.+ps between the girls themselves are almost sacred. The men see no need to form close bonds with each other.

The girls say they completely appreciate that their husbands-every one of them, including Kelly's ex-have been supportive of their get-togethers over the years. Their husbands don't make them feel guilty about leaving the family for their reunions. "Go," they say, "and have a good time. The kids and I will be here when you get back."

Late one night during the reunion, Kelly is talking about her divorce, and Cathy, the only Ames girl who never married, throws a question out to the group: "Do you all feel as if you'll be with your husbands forever?"

All the married girls say that yes, they'll make it to the end.

And then Cathy asks, "Well, if you're in this for forever and ever, how good do you expect it to be?"

From there, a decision is made. Just for fun, the girls are going to rate their husbands. They agree to go around the room one by one using the old reliable scale of one to ten. "Today, my marriage is a ten; I haven't seen him yet," one of the girls says jokingly. Another asks: "Are we rating the man or the marriage? Because that could be two different numbers."

(To resist starting trouble in their marriages, the girls are reluctant to reveal all of their comments, and their husbands' individual scores, for inclusion in this book.) They decide they'll rate the men on several factors, including "the quality of life he brings to my family," "how he makes me feel about myself," "how involved he is as a father," "how attentive he is" and "how attractive I still find him."

Kelly is divorced, of course, and Cathy is single, but the other eight all say that their husbands are decent men-good providers with strong work ethics, smart guys with lots of interests.

Some of the nonworking Ames girls say they appreciate that their husbands earn a good living, allowing them to stay home. That helped lift a husband's score. Some of the working women say their husbands encourage their careers-another score-booster.

Someone comes up with a straightforward line of questioning they all can contemplate: When my husband gets home from work, how do I feel? Am I glad to see him? Am I neutral about it? Or do I think, "OK, now I have to deal with him and his issues"?

One of the girls says she actually gets a little excited when her husband walks in the door. A few others say they wish they had that feeling, but they don't. "That's the time of day when I'd like some downtime, and that's when he wants to talk," one says.

"I feel excited when I see my husband driving away," someone says. (She's kidding!) Do any of their husbands get excited when they walk in the door?

"When we get home from this reunion, they'll definitely be glad to see us," one says. "That's when they'll be able to hand the kids back to us."

Over the years, some of the girls have had slight, innocent flirtations with other men or at least have found other men attractive from a distance. They can talk about these sightings or interactions with each other far more easily than with their friends back home. If there's a man they notice is handsome at Little League or at a PTA meeting, there's no upside in mentioning it to a neighbor, who might know the man and his family. But here, in the confines of an Ames girls reunion, it's easy to share this sort of thing. They're still faithful to their husbands, but they're more comfortable here revealing whatever they've been thinking.

Cathy asks if they can picture their husbands married to anyone else. Or could they see themselves married to any of the other Ames girls' husbands? "I could picture myself having an affair with your husband," one says jokingly about a husband the girls have repeatedly mentioned as being very attractive.

The girls acknowledge some issues in their marriages. One says she sometimes feels as if all she has in common with her husband is their shared devotion to their children.

And there are the full range of annoying habits to be discussed, which lower husbands' scores slightly: "He puts his dirty clothes next to the hamper, not in it." "He never washes fruits and vegetables." "The day we're having people over is the day he decides to clean the garage." "I clean up the house and put stuff at the bottom of the staircase to go upstairs. Every time he goes up the stairs, he just walks by whatever I've put there." "When I clear the table, I'll take all the dishes to the sink. When he gets up, he takes only his dish."

"When something is lost, I want to keep looking until I find it. I'll look and I'll look," one of the girls says. "My husband gives up looking so early. That's annoying to me."

"He's a good-looking bad looker," someone responds.

Coming up with an exact score for each husband is an inexact science. "It's hard to rate husbands, because a lot depends on the day," one girl says. "Sometimes it's a ten, and then the next day it's a five."

None of the eight married women give their husbands a rating lower than six. And when they add up all of their scores and divide by eight, the average score for their husbands is an 8.2. Not bad, they decide.

When they were girls in Ames, dreaming of storybook romances and marriages, would they have been happy with the idea of an 8.2 marriage?

Truth is, as girls, they couldn't even fathom the full impact of being a wife and mother.

"I'll take an 8.2," one of the girls says. "I think that's a sign of a happy household."

As the reunion continues, Jenny is waiting for the opportune time to give everyone some special news. She hasn't had any alcohol since she arrived, and no one notices. Then during one of their dinners, she gets the attention of everyone at the table and tells them her surprise: At age forty-four, she is a couple months pregnant. Her three-year-old son, Jack, will have a sibling.

Everyone is so thrilled for her. There are hugs and congratulations all around.

Jenny, overjoyed at this later-in-life chance to have a second child, admits to a memory dating back to the weekend she got married in Ames in 1996. A bunch of the Ames girls had come into town with their children, and they were planning to get together so all the kids could interact with each other. Jenny, of course, was too busy with wedding duties to join them. But a thought was in her head that day: "I sure wouldn't be too interested in hanging out with a bunch of kids. I'm glad I don't have to go to that gathering! Who wants to be with all those kids?"

Perceptions and feelings change, of course. "My favorite thing about my life is being Jack's mom," Jenny now says. "If I knew how wonderful it would be, I would have done it earlier."

She thinks being an older mother has made her far more patient, less fearful about things like germs, more able to compartmentalize duties at home and on her job at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where she is a.s.sistant dean of public affairs. "I think I'm a better mom because I work. I am lucky to be able to feel a strong sense of accomplishment at the office, and it's nice to have adult conversations there. I don't feel like I should be at work when I'm at home, and that I should be at home when I am at work. When I'm home, I'm totally present.

"I'm proud of the work I do, I really am, though if I didn't do it, somebody else could. But n.o.body can raise Jack the way I can. He's my kid and I think I can raise him best."

Jenny tells the others that longevity is in her genes, so she hopes she'll be around for her kids for a long time. (After her grandmother died, her grandfather courted and then married his sister-in-law-Jenny's grandmother's sister. "We called her Aunt Grandma," Jenny says. "Aunt Grandma lived to be 103. So I'm hoping to live long, too.") If all goes well with the pregnancy, Jenny will deliver a baby who will come of age in the 2020s. What issues will Jenny face as an older parent then? Will "cooperation and appreciation" still be the appropriate mantra? Will the other Ames girls all be grandmothers by then, giving short shrift to her emailed questions about raising teens?

The day after Jenny's announcement of her pregnancy, the girls go into Angela's backyard so photos can be taken of them all in a group with their hands on Jenny's belly. The photos are meant to mirror those taken when they were in their late twenties, having their first children.

The girls will look older in these new photos, of course, but they're infinitely wiser, too. "It'll be so wonderful to have another new life in our lives," Kelly says as she and the others take their positions in a half-moon around Jenny, literally enveloping her in their good wishes.

15.News from Ames

"Any news from Ames?"

Always, whenever the girls get to talking, someone will eventually ask that question. And of course, there is always news. Most of their parents are still in town, keeping them informed, sending them clippings from the Ames Tribune, Ames Tribune, sharing stories about births, marriages, divorces. sharing stories about births, marriages, divorces.

Sometimes, the news from home is just fluffy and amusing.

Here at the reunion, Karen offers a report about a certain woman she b.u.mped into during a recent visit to see her parents in Ames. The woman looked stunning-her figure, her face-and Karen mentioned this when she saw Dr. Good, the dentist she used to work for. "She looked so cute!" Karen told Dr. Good. "I don't remember her being so cute." He responded: "For the right price, you can also be that cute. Even cuter."

In her hometown near Philadelphia, Karen knows plenty of women who've had extensive plastic surgery. "At the gym, the ones with plastic surgery do sit-ups and their b.o.o.bs point toward the ceiling. They jump up and down and nothing moves. Meanwhile the rest of us are wearing two bras." On the East and West Coasts, bionic b.o.o.bs are everywhere. But to think that women in Ames are lining up to have head-to-toe plastic surgery-well, that's newsworthy.The girls at their twentieth Ames High School reunion in 2001 The news from Ames is not always so frivolous, of course. The girls also share reports of their parents' illnesses or setbacks in their siblings' lives or "news" they've happened upon on visits home. Several of the girls have taken their kids sledding on the hill by Ames Munic.i.p.al Cemetery. While the kids sled, they've stood silently in the snow at Sheila's grave site, and then walked around, spotting names they know-teachers, cla.s.smates, parents . . . people they never realized were gone. Sometimes, the girls get their news from Ames on slabs of marble.

In recent years, it has become easier to get news coverage from home in real time. All the girls have to do is type "Ames" into Yahoo! or Google News, and the latest media reports fill their computer screens. They're then able to email interesting links to each other. It's a continuous sharing of all things Ames.

National news emanating from Ames picks up every four years because of the presidential races. The Iowa caucuses began getting attention in the national press in 1972, but the caucuses didn't become full-blown media events until after the girls left town in the 1980s.

From then on, each presidential cycle got crazier than the one before. The girls would phone home and they'd be lucky to get through. Often, their parents' phones were busy because so many campaigns were calling, inviting them to meet the candidates at teas or luncheons or cornfield rallies. "I heard from four potential presidents yesterday," Jenny's mother told her one morning, wearily, "and three so far today, but it's not even noon yet."

On his first campaign swing through Ames in February 2007, a full eleven months before the caucuses, Barack Obama told a crowd of locals that he was having trouble being taken seriously. He lamented that the media was reporting on what he looked like in a swimsuit while on vacation in Hawaii, rather than his positions on the Iraq War. According to TV news coverage that night, the Ames crowd cheered Obama wildly, which led the Ames girls to wonder about both his Iraq policies and what he looked like in a swimsuit.

Often, when Ames. .h.i.ts the news, the girls can't help but be reminded of each other, their families and, of course, their childhoods.

After September 11, 2001, when someone was mailing deadly anthrax to politicians and media outlets, early news reports said the anthrax was "the Ames strain." Researchers at Iowa State had been studying anthrax since 1928, and microbiologists there had more than one hundred vials of anthrax. Scores of news reports suggested that someone in Ames, perhaps working in tandem with terrorists, was responsible for the anthrax attacks. The girls had to wonder: Could it be an old acquaintance? Some weird guy they knew in high school? Eventually, it was determined that the anthrax used in the mailings couldn't have come from Iowa State. Wrong strain. False alarm.

For the girls, spread around the country, such news brought back memories of the mysteries from their childhoods, when they had cla.s.smates whose parents or grandparents had secret jobs at Ames Lab, making atom bombs.

In the mid-1990s, when some of the girls called home and asked for updates, they were told that Marilyn's father was trying to stop construction of a youth sports complex in town. The complex's soccer field was slated to be built adjacent to a site where, in the 1950s, radioactive thorium was deposited by the Ames Lab. Dr. McCormack helped organize a citizens' group that had the soil tested for signs of radiation. The group contended that test results showed the field would be dangerous for children. The Iowa Department of Public Health argued that the field's radiation levels were within acceptable standards, and children would be no less safe there than elsewhere in Ames.

Marilyn's dad had given an impa.s.sioned speech at a public hearing. As a pediatrician, he explained that infants and growing children are highly susceptible to cellular damage from radiation. He talked about cancer risks. And then, as the city council looked on, he folded his arms together as if cradling an imaginary infant. "I've tried to make sure that the babies in this town were raised in good health," he said, "and I didn't do that to have them die on that soccer field." People in attendance that night said Dr. McCormack had tears in his eyes.

When he realized that he was suffering from the onset of Alzheimer's, he pa.s.sed on leaders.h.i.+p of the protest movement to others. He helped convince thirty-six doctors to sign a statement against the sports complex, and they also raised questions about radiation issues elsewhere in Ames. There were reasons for concern: Relatively young alumni of Ames High were dying, often of cancer, at rates that seemed high. On some streets, cancer and Parkinson's disease were visiting almost half the homes. No studies were done, so the incidences were dismissed as anecdotal. But the reports were troubling.

Even as Alzheimer's began stealing his lucidity thought by thought, Dr. McCormack kept lobbying against building those sports fields in that location. He talked about how dust would be kicked up and kids would breathe it in. City councilwoman Pat Brown, a friend of Jane's and Marilyn's families, became a vocal opponent to the sports complex. One night by phone, she received a death threat warning her to support the complex "or you'll be sorry." She needed twenty-four-hour police protection for a while after that.

"Dr. McCormack was a respected man," Brown now says, "but people didn't listen to him."

The sports complex ended up pa.s.sing in city council and the soccer field was built. Thousands of children have played soccer on it each year since.

The news from Ames. So often, it left emotions swirling.

Sometimes the news from Ames was about one of the girls themselves.

One day in February 2007, Marilyn drove down to Iowa from her home in Minnesota to have dinner with Jane's parents-and to venture into the Ames Public Library. This specific library visit was a planned mission. Marilyn had finally decided to go into the microfilm room, to find the cabinet labeled "Ames Daily Tribune" and, for the first time in her life, to open the drawer that contained the film for September 1960.

Holding the box in her hands, she felt a kind of unsettling curiosity, and more than a bit of dread and sadness. What would she learn by looking at it?

She sat down, spooled the film into the microfilm reader, flipped on the switch and then turned the dial to the right. Front-page photos, movie listings and sports news from 1960 began speeding by her on the screen. She didn't stop to read anything. She was looking for the front page from September 26. The film whirred by so fast that by the time she stopped it, September 29 was on the screen. She turned the dial in reverse . . . September 28, September 27 . . . and then there it was, September 26, with the front-page headline: "Accident Fatal to Ames Boy."

It was the biggest news in Ames that day, bigger than two major stories that were b.u.mped lower on the page. One of the b.u.mped articles was a preview of the televised Nixon-Kennedy debate, to be held that night. Headlined "Much at Stake, Nixon-Kennedy Debate Tonight," the article described the debate as "an electronic suggestion of the famous debates 102 years ago between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas." The other big story was about President Eisenhower's arrival by motorcade for a United Nations General a.s.sembly meeting. More than 750,000 New Yorkers had crowded the streets to greet him. That day, Fidel Castro would give an infamous four-hour speech at the UN, lambasting U.S. policies.

And yet, those two historic stories were dwarfed on the front page of The Ames Tribune The Ames Tribune by the large photo of two smashed cars that had met at the crossroads of four cornfields. The death of Marilyn's brother Billy had pushed everything else aside. Marilyn was here in the microfilm room because she had decided she wanted to know as much as she could about what happened that day. by the large photo of two smashed cars that had met at the crossroads of four cornfields. The death of Marilyn's brother Billy had pushed everything else aside. Marilyn was here in the microfilm room because she had decided she wanted to know as much as she could about what happened that day.

Looking at that giant photo on the front page, she broke into tears, and that surprised her. She thought she was doing research, not digging into her psyche. She had never before cried for Billy, at least not that she could recall. She knew, of course, that Billy's death had led to her dad's vasectomy reversal, and to her birth, and that the accident was very well the most traumatic moment in the lives of her siblings and parents. But, as she would later tell the other girls, she had always been emotionally strong about it.

She surprised herself again, there in the library, when a memory came cras.h.i.+ng into her head, a memory of a car accident back in Minnesota five years earlier. Her husband was driving the family car home from church on a Sunday morning. She was in the front pa.s.senger seat and their three kids were in back, along with two of her sister's kids. A car made an illegal turn at a red light and smashed into them. The airbags went off, and their car was totaled, but miraculously, n.o.body was badly hurt. And right then, looking at that microfilmed image of the 1960 car wreck, it occurred to Marilyn that both her son and nephew had been around the age Billy was when he died. And looking at that awful 1960 photo in The Ames Tribune, The Ames Tribune, she thought to herself: "Maybe it was Billy. Maybe Billy put his hand down and touched the five kids in our car, and somehow said, 'No, not them.' " she thought to herself: "Maybe it was Billy. Maybe Billy put his hand down and touched the five kids in our car, and somehow said, 'No, not them.' "

Through her tears, she continued to study the microfilm version of the story about the accident. It spelled out details-that the two-car collision happened at 11:45 A.M. at the intersection of two gravel roads, that Marilyn's mother and three other siblings were seriously hurt, that tall cornstalks may have obstructed the view. The story said Billy was seven years old, though he was actually still six. His birthday was a few weeks away.

The article also gave specifics about the fifteen-year-old boy who had plowed his speeding car into the McCormack's station wagon, and about how he had violated his "school permit," which allowed him to drive only on a direct route to school and back. The boy had been injured also and was hospitalized. His name was in the article: Elwood Koelder.

Seeing the name startled Marilyn. She'd never known the boy's name, though she was aware that her parents had long ago forgiven him. "He was just a boy himself," her mom would say. And now to finally have his name in front of her, well, Marilyn decided immediately that she wanted to find him.

She wiped away her tears, printed out a copy of that article and put the microfilm box back in the drawer. That night, over dinner with Jane's parents, she recounted her visit to the library.

"His name is Elwood Koelder, and he'd be sixty-two years old now, if he's still alive," she told them. "I'd like to talk to him."

"What will you say to him?" they asked.

"I don't know," she said. She wondered whether he felt remorse or thought about her brother each year on September 26. How had the accident affected his life?

"Maybe I'll tell him it's OK. If he's been hurting about this all these years, he can go easier on himself. I got the chance to live in this world because of what happened that day, so maybe I'm the one who should tell him this."

Marilyn has a letter in her hands that she printed out on her computer back home and brought to North Carolina for the reunion. Several of the girls are on the back porch with her, and she's explaining how the letter came to be written.

She tells them about discovering Elwood's name on microfilm and then plugging it into Google. Within seconds, she had found a small-town newspaper story from 2005 about a truck driver named El Koelder, who lived in Milford, Iowa. The story was about how he and his friends spent sixteen years trying to harvest a pumpkin large enough to win top prize at the local county fair.