Marilyn Sue Beale

I met Marilyn Hukkala the first day of middle school. We were assigned lockers “next door” to each other. We were doubled up on lockers in alphabetical order by last name, so Marilyn Hukkala/Denise Hurd were next to Sharon Jernigan (me)/Ginger Johnson. (I guess there were no “I” last names.) We must have hit it off, because after that day we were friends all the way through school. Looking back, I’m astounded that I don’t even have any pictures of us together. I guess my picture-taking skills were nil back then. My, how things have changed—my family teases me because I take pictures of everyone wherever we go now. I sure wish I had then. But we did the types of things most average, pre-teen/teen girls did back then. We had a lot of classes together (Mrs. Gingerich’s Latin class, Mr. Shoebridge’s English class, and Mr. Wilcox’s science class especially come to mind—not always for good reasons. LOL). We learned to sew together in Home Ec class, and stayed after school sometimes to work on our sewing projects. Outside of school we did things like going to Edgewater Amusement Park, sledding and ice skating in winter, the Detroit Zoo, movies (in particular, I remember seeing The Great Race), a few spend-the-night parties, a Christmas caroling party. Toward the end of our senior year in high school, we went on the class trip to the Bahamas together and were roommates there. We parted ways for college, then we each got married and had kids, and I moved out of state (to several different locations, but never again back to Michigan). Yet even through all that, we stayed in touch all those 50 years. And when Facebook came along, it helped to facilitate the communication between us. There were many evenings when I’d be on my computer, and up would pop a message from Marilyn. It was like sitting on my front porch at the end of the day and having a good friend stop by to chat for awhile. Those messages and the ensuing chats were always welcome. I sure miss them now. I was recently looking at our senior yearbook. The last line Marilyn wrote to me said, “Keep in touch and we can laugh over this book in the future.” Well, looking back 50 years later, we did an awesome job on that last part about keeping in touch, didn’t we?