Larry met Jane when they were still just teenagers attending college. After falling madly in love, Larry enlisted in the Navy, and after Jane graduated, they got married.
Their first duty station was in Maine, the 2nd was Guam. After the Navy, Larry started working part time for UPS while completing university. In 1987, they purchased a summer home in West Boothbay Harbor, and when Larry retired in 2000, they settled in Sequim, Washington for the winters, where Larry served as a Coast Guard SAR Controller, Group Duty Officer, Vessel Examiner, public education instructor, and motor lifeboat crewmember at Coast Guard Group Port Angeles, WA.
It was in 2004 when Jane’s diagnosis and treatment for Stage IV ovarian cancer, would cause Larry to look for some diversion to fill the hours he spent caregiving by her side
During the days of Jane’s aggressive cancer treatments Larry spent hours researching and buying hundreds of outboard motors on eBay and through other websites and classifieds.
In 2006 Jane went into remission and the pair set off on a cross-country journey to pick-up his nearly 300 outboards in a Penske 26’l box truck. They left Washington and traveled through 20 states and across 6,500 miles. They filled the truck more than once and had to deadhead from Niagara Falls to Maine to unload before setting out again.
The trip brought Larry great joy, but soon after the journey, Jane’s cancer returned and she succumbed to the cancer and left this world on in 2013.
After Jane passed, Larry decided that that the joy he had felt in amassing them with Jane would only be recaptured by sharing them and he split 400 outboards between the LeMay in Tacoma, and the Boothbay Railway Village in Maine
What a story! True love for one another and caring for the people around him by sharing his time and his possessions. Thanks for this story of a good man.
ReplyDeleteyou are very welcome. I rarely find good true stories, and post them when I can
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