These two 80-year-old pen pals were stationary for 68 years, but they finally found a technique to meet.
Patsy Gregory, from England, and Carol-Ann Krause, from Latest York, each 80, have been writing letters to one another from opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean since they were each 12 in 1955.
They found one another at the moment when Gregory was involved within the UK’s Girl Guides and Krause was within the stateside Girl Scouts.
“Within the Girl Guides, I happened to get Carol-Ann’s name,” Gregory explained to South West News Service. “We began writing and we never stopped. It’s so simple as that.”
“We’ve all the time remembered one another on our wedding anniversaries and at Christmas and stuff like that. And we’ve still continued corresponding even now,” said Krause.
They might write not less than one letter every two months to one another, Gregory said, talking about school, who they went out with and what was latest of their lives.
Over the past 68 years, the 2 women never stopped writing — exchanging, they estimate, greater than 800 letters between them — and even went through similar life stages at the identical time, including getting married only one yr apart and every giving birth to a few children.
“It was just things like that,” Gregory explained. “It was just as if I knew her all my life, but we just never met.”
But as her eightieth birthday approached on June 6, Gregory confessed to her daughter, Steph Calam, that she all the time desired to visit Krause, who now lives in Conway, South Carolina.
Her daughter used social media to trace down Krause’s family and asked in the event that they can be all in favour of a meet-up — to which they said yes, after all.
“I used to be greater than blissful to take her up on the offer. Our birthdays are only separated by a month,” Krause said.
After hearing that, Gregory’s family surprised her on her eightieth birthday with a ticket to South Carolina to finally have the ability to fulfill her pen pal on July 14.
“It was quite emotional — it was lovely,” Gregory said about meeting Krause. “I recognized her immediately; she looked similar to her photograph.
“It was just as if I’d seen her last week because we’d known of one another for therefore long,” she added.
Krause admitted that she was a bit nervous to finally meet her pen pal in person.
“It was emotional,” she said. “I used to be a bundle of nerves.”
In the course of the visit, the 2 chatted for hours about their friendship and enjoyed visiting local sights and going out to eat.
“We did plenty of talking. We went out for quite a number of different meals in places that Carol-Ann and her husband enjoyed going to,” Gregory gushed.
But, strangely enough, Gregory and Krause aren’t the one pen pals who’ve kept in contact with one another for years and years.
Last December, Celesta Byrne, who lives within the US, and Geoff Banks, from the UK, got to rejoice their one centesimal birthdays along with their first video call after writing letters to one another for nearly 84 years.
The 2 first began communicating in 1938 once they were just 16, sending their first letters across 5,000 miles as a part of an academic program to attach US and British students.
