Not everyone gets a second chance, but Mike Sanford and Barbara Welch have.
More than 50 years after dating, then going their separate ways, they found each other despite being 1,200 miles apart. They reconnected, dated and married.
And, they say, it’s wonderful;
maybe better than it would have been 56 years ago.
In the 1950s, Barbara was 14;
Mike was 15. They met in a small church on the south side of Tucson, Ariz.
Barbara had moved to Tucson from northwest Arkansas with her family because of her father’s health. He had TB and arthritis.
“We were immediately attracted to one another,” Barbara recalls. They attended church Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday evening and met at church on Friday night to either play volleyball or go roller skating.
During church, they sat on the back row, held hands and, as she said with a demure smile, “listened intently to” the pastor. The two were not old enough to drive, so Mike walked Barbara home after services. Sometimes, the two rode the bus to downtown Tucson to see a movie. Mike’s mother drove them to the state fair in Phoenix.
Mike was Barbara’s first boyfriend.
His was her first kiss.
Then, as often happens, time and circumstances change relationships. They went their separate ways, Barbara said, and lived very different lives and did not stay in touch. Each were married.
Each had children. There were divorces and the death of a spouse.
Barbara married at 18, had a child and divorced after six years of marriage. Then, she married again, this time, for 38 years before being widowed.
Mike went into the Navy and was stationed in Japan. But he lived in Tucson and Phoenix after the Navy. Barbara lived in Phoenix, Tucson, Show Low, and in 1988 moved back to the state of her birth, Arkansas. She worked as the bookkeeper for the city of Pea Ridge for 23 years. She retires this week.
“My grandmother had passed away and my mother was here.
We wanted to be near her,” Barbara said of her decision to return to Arkansas.
Mike retired in 2010 after 34 years as a bus driver with Greyhound.
Barbara joined My Life (mylife.com, a website that allows members to follow and update personal connections, monitor their online identity, and aggregate their social and email accounts) in August 2010, looking for a long-lost girl friend. Little did she know that 1,200 miles away, Mike had also joined mylife.com, in July 2010. One of the reasons he joined was that he had been looking for Barbara for many years. So, finding her there, he sent a message.
At first, Barbara did not respond. Mike is his middle name.
She didn’t recognize him by the first name, Kenneth. When she did, she hesitantly replied. Soon, the two struck up a correspondence. He asked: “Are you the same Barbara who dumped me in 1957?”
She said: “I don’t remember dumping you.”
Barbara’s friends at City Hall stepped in. They emailed Mike warning him that he better be honest and not try to take advantage of Barbara. City Recorder Sandy Button wrote: “If you’re not sincere and you try to hurt her, she has a whole police department for friends. They will hunt you down. Have a good day.”
Unperturbed, he responded: “I love her. I’ve never forgotten her. You have a good day, too.”
After many emails and hours on the phone, Mike visited Barbara in October 2010. It was as if time had been erased when they met again. Mike moved to Arkansas in December 2010 to be with Barbara. They married on April 9, 2011.
Mike has a son who has two children. Barbara’s son has a daughter, who Barbara refers to as her “pride and joy.”
Ironically, the friend Barbara had set out to find on My Life was found by Mike and the two ladies have reconnected.
“When we go to Arizona, we stop by to see her,” Barbara said. The two travel to Arizona twice a year.
“People don’t understand this relationship and don’t understand how I can trust him. There’s not too many men who will greet you at the front door, kiss you and say: ‘I’m so glad you’re home,’” she said. “He declares his love for me every day.”
“I’ve always been in love with her. I’ve never stopped loving her,” Mike said.
Barbara admits that some family members were skeptical, but now most are “won over.”
“It’s amazing. Mike remembers everything including the address of the house where I lived,” she said.
So now, she’s retiring.
And what will she do in retirement?
“Anything I want to,” she laughed.
“So what’s different?” her friend, Police Chief Tim Ledbetter, asked, smiling at the joke.
Barbara says she’s probably a better person for her life experiences and although she and Mike wonder what would have been if they’d never broken up, they have wonderful children from their previous marriages.
“I think God had a plan,” she said.
“I’ve learned a lot. I’ve made some truly wonderful friends,” she said, recalling how much the city has grown in the past 23 years.
So, for one last time, Barbara will clock in Friday morning, then clock out Friday afternoon.
She will go home to her first love, and a life of retirement.
News, Pages 1 on 07/10/2013