By Bobbie L. Carpenter
bobbie@newstribune.info
Tribune Staff Writer
FORT ASHBY — Some people come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.
For Fort Ashby resident, Marjorie (Wildemann) Jennings, she never lost touch with her high school pals and has enjoyed a lifetime of memories that took her and several of her 1943 Keyser High classmates around the world and back.
Today, the original group of 10 MHU members (acronym only known by members of the high school group and a few select others) are down to seven. Four of the seven that live locally enjoy meeting up twice a month to grab lunch, play cards, and just catch up.
The regular meetings, however, are no match to the fun the ladies experience when they escape their daily lives to spend three-four days or so in one of the lady’s cottages on the South Branch to relax, have fun, and just laugh.
“Honest to goodness we laugh and play cards nonstop,” said Jennings’ friend, Ginna (Amtower) Porter, now a Romney resident. “You’re six when you go and when you come home you’re 82.”
The group of long-time confidants have the reunions once a year and always after their “Fabulous 40s” class reunions, which are held every two years.
“After our class reunions is where the real fun begins,” said Jennings, of her other pal that she’s known since the beginning of grade school — Elsie Mae Kirtley of Keyser.
Celene (Robinson) Trickett, of Oakland, Md., whom Jennings has known since before grade school, having met her at Grace United Methodist Church, is also a regular in the local fabulous four.
The ladies describe this time as a time where they catch up, talk about which medications they are taking and reminisce about their
(See FRIENDS, page 2)
yesteryears when they used to ride their bikes to Piedmont on a whim, drink hickeys at the Sugar Bowl and hang out at the Blue Jay.
This year, their biannual class reunion, held in conjunction with a few KHS classes of the Thrifty Thirties, is scheduled for Aug. 22.
The ladies will retreat to the cottage directly after the reunion wraps up.
Three other friends — Emelia (Mercuri) Moss of Tulsa, Okla., Louise “Skeeter” (Ashby) Crumbaugh of Hamstead, Md., and Jinny Lou (Sheetz) Byers of Franklin, W.Va. will also make it in to join the rest of the gang.
These ladies also enjoy having fun on an international level as Jennings shares that the group has traveled, mostly by cruise ship, to various countries around the world.
“I took a trip cross country with one of my girlfriends for a month,” said Jennings. “We rode around in an RV that you can sleep in.”
Greece, Russia, England — all of Europe, Tijuana, Hawaii, and Alaska — are just a few of the destinations Jennings and her friends have ventured.
The only place the group has not been that they would like to see is Australia.
“It would have to be very special to get me and Elsie to go,” said Jennings, a former homemaker. “We are pretty satisfied.”
Porter, a retired assistant director of nursing at the Western Maryland Health Systems Memorial Campus, said she and her friends would like to get in one last trip.
The group has slowed down in their travels after Kirtley, a retired secretary of the chief engineer for Westvaco for 43 years, fell and broke her wrist while visiting the Louvre in France.
Kirtley said one of her most memorable experiences traveling with her friends occurred on a 1999 visit to the Panama Canal.
“When we went to the Panama Canal there was an eclipse and we wore special glasses and went onto the to deck,” said Kirtley. “It was as clear as a bell.”
When asked how the group of ladies stayed so close after graduation, during a time when many friends drift apart, Jennings said “we are just there for each other, through the good and the bad.”
“Of course we have went different directions over the years,” said Jennings. “But during the years we have always stayed in touch. When the bad times came, they were always there.”
When Porter’s husband died fairly early into her marriage, her friends were the ones she went to for support. When Jennings’ husband died 12 years ago, she said all four of the ladies were all alone.
Currently, the ladies all drive, do not smoke and have all outlived everyone in their immediate families.
Jennings is the mother of four children, eight grand children and three great-grandchildren while Porter has three children, four grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.
Kirtley never married while Trickett has five children and five grandchildren.
While the ladies reminisce and laugh about the time their MHU group was recognized in their yearbook right beside all the other major clubs, they will enjoy their time together in the cottage they’ve aptly named “Assisted Living” because “we assist each other,” said Jennings.
Keyser, W.Va. —
