Sense of Relief...25º

Before leaving Joseph that morning, we drove by the elementary school where Rusty would finish 2nd grade, and a few blocks away atop a hill was the middle/high school where Bobbie Jo would finish 5th grade...Looking West from the school we spotted the little white house on Barton Heights that within a month would become our home...A break in the clouds gave us our first glimpse of Chief Joseph Mountain looming over the city...We left Wallowa Valley that morning, with the feeling that things were going to work out and even though we had our work cut out for us, in one short month we would be living in a different house, in a different town, starting on another of lifes journeys.

Returning to Council was a 5 hour drive on good roads, and the closer we got the more our moods changed knowing life without Herb's Mom would be very difficult for all of us...For a couple of days we had pushed her death into the back ground but now it would be staring us right in the face again...The little house would no longer ring with her ready laughter, welcoming smile and upbeat nature...She loved life and her family, always planned for our visits, with joy in her heart, cooking and cleaning, hardly able to contain herself until we arrived...But this time we came to say our goodbyes, to love and support our Dad and Grampa.

Herb was their only child and they were a tight knit trio when I met them, in 1959...Only two years before we met, Herb and his parents had moved from Clinton Corners, New York to McCall, Idaho...They moved to McCall for the clear, clean air with no humidity because of Frances' (commonly called Babe by family and friends) asthma and so Herb could enroll at the University of Idaho...Herb and I met through mutual friends and married two years later...At first his parents had some trepidation about our romance, (with good reason) I was almost 6 years younger than Herb and still in high school when we started dating but soon many miles separted us when he returned to college, I graduated from high school and moved even farther away when I enrolled in beauty school in Boise, Idaho...In those two years Herb's parents became my friends and accepted me as the daughter they never had and I in turn loved them as a second family...We married and brought incredible joy to them in the form of grandchildren...Three years later we nearly broke their hearts when Herb accecpted a transfer to Duchesne, Utah, almost 600 miles away from McCall...Hugs To All...OWAV:)