Congratulations Are In Order

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

I didn't want to say anything even though I was aware of this for a while, but since Joe responded with the info which is buried in one of the NEAR-Fest threads, I want to take the opportunity to say:


Congratulations and Best Wishes to the newly-wed Mr. & Mrs. Joseph Fell!!


After spending many years together, these two crazy kids made it official on October 9th if I recall correctly. Many Happy Returns, and may your lives together be filled with great, old radios and great, old vehicles (preferably of the V8 variety).

[W3GMS]

Well Todd, thanks very much for your kind words.  As you know Martha and I have been together for 16 years and our mutual compatibility has made life a joy.  Over the past 16 years she has helped me move more boat anchors than anyone could imagine, including that surprise she gave me last Christmas by buying your Johnson Desk KW for me.  We have a blast helping each other working on our projects together.  As you said, her car restoration hobby and my radio passion keep life interesting. 
We had a nice small wedding at the church I was baptized in soon after being born.  Family and a few of my closest Ham Radio friends that I have known since I was 14 years old attended.  It was a great day! 
Joe-W3GMS
 

[The Slab Bacon]

Congrats!!

Now youse guys have to catch up to us. 23 years in november    

[W3GMS]

Thanks Frank.  We will try to catch up to you and Carol but it will be tuff! 
Joe

[W2DU]

Congratulations from Michigan, too, Joe. May you and Martha continue to be as happy in the future as you have been during these past 16 years!!

Not meaning to take anything away from your great event, Joe, but I'd like to tell all how happy a SECOND marriage has been for me and my Jean.

I fell in love with my second wife, Jean, when we were both 15 years old--she was a sophomore in HS, and I was a senior. She was the first girl I ever dated, and I was also her very first date. We lost track of each other after HS, but I found her 61 years later, after I had been widowed for 12 years. We have made up for lost time by having had eight cruises on both the Caribbean and the Atlantic, and have been to Europe four times. We've been married for fourteen years--she's 91 and I'll be 92 in January.

Joe and Martha--Jean and I wish you both happy sailings on whatever seas you choose to sail!!!

Walt

[W1UJR]

Joe and Martha,

Wonderful news indeed.

The very best wishes from Nancy and I to Martha and you for a
long and blessed life together!


- Bruce

[KA8WTK]

Best Wishes to Joe and Martha!

[W2DU]

Joe and Martha, please accept my apology for intruding on your event in my earlier post that drew attention away from your event. My intrusion was rude, and I am sorry.

Walt

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

I think it was good stuff Walt, and most appropriate. I'm sure Joe will agree and certainly be able to relate. In a time of turmoil, and when marriage has been marginalized so much, it's always good to hear a story with a happy ending. Something for all of us to aim for.

[K5UJ]

Congratulations Joe, and wishes for many happy days to you.

73

Rob

[w3jn]

My best by gollies to both of you!

[Tom WA3KLR]

Congratulations Martha and Joe!

[k4kyv]

Congratulations Joe and Martha; best wishes to you both AND best wishes to Walt and Jean. May the four of you enjoy many more years of happiness to come.

Don k4kyv

[WA1GFZ]

Good luck Joe & Martha

Walt that is a very nice story.

[WA3VJB]

Nice to hear, Joe & Martha.

Having met you and spent much time over the years, you're among the most genuine and enjoyable folks I know from the radio.

[W3GMS]

First to Walt:

Walt, both Martha and I really enjoyed your personal story and its certainly very relevant.  I think it is wonderful that you completed the circle with your first love.  Happiness is often strived for, but some folks just are not able to find it and that is sad.  I love your sailing analogies and that is most appropriate for Martha and I since we both like to spend spare time on the water very much!   

Thanks for the well wishes from Jean and yourself!  You did not intrude on our event and your story made it extra special.    


Now to the rest of the gang,

I am overwhelmed with such response from all my radio friends.  Some of you I have met and others we just know because of this wonderful site sharing a passion about AM radio that we all have. 

So thanks to Bruce, Walt, Todd, Rob, John, Tom, Don, Frank, and Paul. 

Paul,
Your comment was very overwhelming and I thank you for those kind words OM !

Best Wishes,
Joe, W3GMS & Martha, N3QBE   

 

[W2DU]

Thank you, Martha and Joe, for the warm, but unexpected, response to my earlier post. I am relieved that I didn't offend you with it.

Having said that, I believe you might enjoy reading a true story Jean wrote about us that was published around ten years ago in WorldRadio Magazine. It follows below:

                             A Fairy Tale That Came True!
                                             By
                                      Jean Maxwell
     Once upon a time there was a 15-year-old boy, who was so much in love with a 15-year-old girl that he couldn’t sleep or eat. His lovesickness was very real but he couldn’t talk to her about it. He thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. They both played in the Mt. Pleasant High School band, but he was 2 years advanced from her scholastically, and graduated from high school the year she was a sophomore, in 1935, when they were both 16. He did all sorts of things to get her attention, like writing the musical arrangements of pop songs for three trumpets and piano, for a trumpet trio for himself and two friends to perform, in the hope that SHE would accompany them on piano and he could thus be close to her. (She did, and the trio performed for the HS assembly.) He also took to writing notes to her in study-hall (remember those days?) since he was absolutely tongue-tied in her presence and couldn’t speak at all. In one of those notes he invited her to the senior prom.
     Any 15-year-old girl would be ga-ga over such a possibility, so she hurried home to ask her parents’ permission to go. To her embarrassment, they finally acceded but only under the stipulation that THEY would have to escort her both to and from the dance. Oh, woe. But yes, she wrote back her acceptance to the boy, (under those embarrassing conditions—better that than nothing.) And it was not until she had written a note back that she would like to go with him, that he suddenly realized that he had asked a girl to a prom AND HE DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO DANCE! (He was a musician, performing at all the dances he had  previously attended.)
     He promptly enlisted the help of a buddy who knew the dance steps and practiced all morning the day of the dance. To no avail. He was terrible. Like a person dancing on stilts. And to make matters worse, he couldn’t seem to talk to her either. One 5-word sentence remains in memory:  “Would you like to dance?” and that was about it. A distressing first date for them.
     He returned to his home in Mt. Pleasant MI, after being in the Navy during World War II, with his wife and baby, (Bill, now W2WM), engineered and built Mt. Pleasant's first radio-broadcast station, WCEN, after which RCA hired him away. He spent the remainder of his career with RCA as an electrical engineer in Princeton, NJ, managing their antenna laboratory, and designing antennas that now orbit the earth on satellites giving us our long-range weather forecasts. He also has antennas on the moon buggies parked in NASA’s used car lot on the moon. Several of his antennas are in the Smithsonian, including those on the World’s first weather satellite, TIROS I. He played trumpet during WW2 with such big bands as Alvino Rey. Formerly playing string bass with the Deltonans in DeLand, FL, a Glenn Miller-style, 14-piece big band, made up of retired professional musicians, he now plays regular Friday/Saturday gigs with a small jazz group at the Royal Bar and Grill, a country club at Canadian Lakes, with an occasional stint at the Brass Café and Saloon in Mt. Pleasant.
     After being retired for 15 years and widowed for 12, he decided that he was reading altogether too many obituaries of those who had been close to him in his early years, and decided to do something about it--he would have been devastated had he ever seen her name there. Fortuitously, he later saw her picture and an article in a professional publication, indicating that she had married, raised a family and had a rewarding career, all without his knowledge of her whereabouts. He acted upon his wishes to find out more about her, and called her to ask permission to send some pictures and to ask for some from her.
     The lady was shocked (and pleasantly surprised) to hear from him after 61 years, for she didn’t know where HE had spent his life either. Her immediate reaction was “What a marvelously youthful and vigorous voice this man has!,” knowing, of course, that he had reached the same age as she, and might possibly show that age in his voice, which he did not.  It is also important to remember that she had really not heard his voice much in his youth. (He couldn’t talk to her, remember?)
     Well, now he could and did talk…wonderfully. So wonderfully that, as one phone call led to another, the lady fell hopelessly in love with the voice of a man she had not seen in 61 years. After several Fed Ex, Fax and e-mail messages, supplemented by many phone calls, they decided that surely a three-day, get-acquainted cruise was in order, and he immediately booked it. She flew to DeLand, Florida to meet him, and her opening words (after a giant hug) were, “Where did you say this boat is going?” To which he replied, “I can’t remember. I’ll have to look it up.”
     To say that they had the best time of their lives on that cruise would be the understatement of the year.  And at the captain’s cocktail party, when he took her in his arms to dance with her, he took two steps, and she flew promptly to the moon to join his antennas. For now he could and did dance…wonderfully. How a scientist of his caliber could also be such a true romantic is mind-boggling to say the least. But when he also said, “Figuratively speaking, I’ve been waiting for you all my life,” the lady succumbed completely, and decided that her destiny had become irrevocably joined with his for whatever time is left to them both.
     They are living their remaining years together. In the winter months (November through April) they can be reached at his home in DeLand. In the summer they will be at her home in Mt. Pleasant, MI.
     And for the record--his name is WALTER MAXWELL, known to ham-radio operators as W2DU, and on the Internet as walt@w2du.com, and his web page at www.w2du.com . He is retired from RCA’s Astro-Electronics Division. Her name is JEAN BINKLEY MAYHEW MAXWELL, Professor Emeritus, Central Michigan University.
     On February 27, 1997, Jean and Walt were quietly and romantically married on the Caribbean island of Anguilla, in the Netherlands Antilles. Even though they both reached 83 years in 2002, their perpetual honeymoon would make 20-year-olds envious. Furthermore, each February they have traveled to their Eden on Anguilla to celebrate the anniversary of this twilight marriage, which was surely made in Heaven. They will continue the travel as long as their health permits. However, only their fairy godmother is allowed to accompany them.
     PS—to date they have participated in eight cruises on the Caribbean and the Atlantic, four trips to Europe, and a Portugal to Rio de Janeiro trip scheduled for November 2006.

[W3GMS]

Walt,
What a wonderful story Jean has told.  I could feel the passion in her words and I am so thankful that both of you found each other after so many years.  Happiness is an understatement to say the least.  Martha and I hope to have the pleasure to meet Jean someday. 

I met you Walt at a Hamfest many years ago and if I remember correctly we were tail gating next to each other.   In various threads on this site with you, I am amazed at how many mutual friends we have. 
 
Thanks so very much for sharing Jean's wonderful story.  Martha and I certainly enjoyed reading it.  Keep enjoying those trips and the wonderful time both of you share together.

Best Wishes,
Joe & Martha       

[Opcom]

Congratulations!

[W3GMS]

Thanks Pat, we appreciate your congratulations!
Joe

[The Slab Bacon]

To Walt:

That is an absolutely fantastic story! ! ! !  May you have many, many more! ! ! !

[W1UX]

Very very best wishes to you Joe and Martha! Congratulations!
Both Wayne Green and Dave Sumner join me in extending you the warmest congrats hi hi
73 Al W1UX

[W3GMS]

Many thanks Al for your well wishes Mr. Al.  What nice words from Wayne and David 
Regards,
Joe