Family Friends

Moving to a new location involves leaving good friends behind and making new friends in a new place. Certainly our family had that experience several times as we moved in the states of Missouri, Kansas and Illinois. In one of my past blogs you were introduced to the Watkins family. Mom and Dad became good friends with Jack and Donna when we lived in Joplin, Missouri. Dad and Jack worked together in the same office for Public Finance for about two years. Friends like Jack and Donna were not unusual but the way our moves paralleled each other for about 6 years has always intrigued me.
Jack, Donna and their family of Teri and Karen were the first to move from Joplin. I'm not really sure where they moved. However,When our family moved to Hutchinson the Watkins family lived in Wichita. Cool. They would come to visit us or we would go visit them on weekends. It was kind of neat to see some familiar faces. In the blog about Hutchinson I mentioned that Dad took Gregg & Gary to stay with the Watkins while Mom was in the hospital with Scott.
In our move to Illinois, we were the first ones to leave Kansas. It didn't seem very long before the Watkins family followed us to Illinois, moving to Decatur. Jack was now working for Liberty Loan but we still traded weekend visits with them. Decatur was only about 30 miles north of Riverton. Eventually Dad moved to Liberty Loan and trained with Jack Watkins in his Decatur office. I remember one story about Dad and Jack going chasing while in Illinois. Apparently they were close to the University of Illinois campus and decided to go see the NEW basketball arena. As they walked in one of the security guards thought they were members of a visiting basketball team. Jack was pretty tall as the pictures show.
The Watkins family was the first to leave Illinois and again I don't know exactly where they moved to. Eventually they ended up in Denver. Dad completed his training with Liberty Loan at an office in Malden, Missouri for a few weeks before we moved to Lebanon, Missouri.

I came in contact with the Watkins family when our Church youth group made trips to Rocky Mountain National Park in the summers of 1970 and 1971 . One of our day trips was to the museum in Denver. Knowing that Jack & Donna lived in Denver I took the opporunity to see if I could meet up with them. We did get together and visit for a little while and long enough to take a picture of their family which now included two sons along with Teri & Karen. I'm sorry, I don't remember the boys names. In the summer of 1972 our family took a vacation trip to Denver to visit the Watkins family. We stayed with them for almost a week. At that time their two boys were about 5 and 3. Teri and Karen were working during the summer so they weren't able to go on some of our day trips to the Air Force Academy, Garden of the Gods, Red Rock Ampitheatre and Mount Evans.
That trip to Denver was the last contact I have had with the Watkins family. I'm sure Mom/Grandma Rita may have had some contact with them over the years. It was only a span of six years, 1958-1964, but again I have always been intrigued by the way our paths crossed during that time. Truly they were good family friends. -30-