Hawaii Connection: New friends and old.

These past several weeks have been a whirlwind of interesting happenings.

It was a delight to meet Amelia Ana Bailey when I picked up Uncle Jim at the airport returning from Hawaii.  Old friends from WWII when Jim served in the Merchant Marines for three years.  She is a delight.  We had a wonderful breakfast at Little America.  In the Hawaiian tradition Jim brought me a lovely ginger lei.

Amelia Ana Bailey and Jim Beatty

Amelia is as lovely and charming as she appears.  Ask most Hawaiians and they know Amelia Ana Bailey.  I did at my 50th BYU Reunion and  their reply -- "Everyone knows Amelia Bailey!"

Audrey Hyde, an old friend from my Bozeman days was in town from Hawaii to take care of her grandfather for a couple of weeks.  Audrey and I had a great dinner at India Fusion in West Valley.  It was really, really good.  Audrey makes Indian food and was the perfect dinner companion.  Not the easiest place to find by Internet direction unless you were to know its in Jordan Landing, but a man carrying his golf clubs into an office building helped us out on his wireless.  We only had a few minutes to wait for the buffet.  I'd go back in a heartbeat.   Hot naan offered multiple times.  For me--wonderful comfort food.

Scott teaches statistics at BYU-HI. He is nephew of  Dad's colleague and Aunt Diane's old boy friend, Joe Christensen who stayed with us in Scotland.  Audrey was raised on various islands of the Pacific and her parents live on a very remote island.  She benefits from her background and has learned from an older neighbor how to live more economically on Oahu.  Some interesting trivia--they utilize their free-range chickens to take their turns cultivating the year-round garden,  make  soursop, lilikoi jam (delicous!), home school . . .  

I regret, in this whirlwind of weeks, not remembering more of the interesting aspects of their lives.

More old friends--the Tim Stewart Family.  Polly and I had a couple of hours with Tim and his family in town taking son, Taylor, to the MTC prior to his mission to Mexico.

 

 Roma and Tim

Nate, Taylor and Pearce.

Tim teaches Interior Design at Moorpark College in California.  Roma is a nurse at the newborn section of the hospital, Nate is a student at Moorpark College and Pearce a junior at the high school.  A favorite pursuit of their family has been visiting a unique site in each of the United States and then on to France, Italy, ....   They all help plan, save and research each trip.  They know how to travel!

We really had a great time visiting.  It is always a special joy to hear first-hand stories of Dad.  The stories were not new to Tim's boys.  They knew David Parkinson.  We had fun passing Dad's bronze hand print to further illustrate Dad and sharing our family photos from recent family calendars.