This unsolicited email a joy - Ledger columnist finds surprise childhood connection

QUINCY – If you are thinking of getting in touch with someone you don't know because you once had a mutual friend and never knew it, give it a go.

I'd never heard of Lucy Wilhelm, but in April there was an email from her in my inbox. It turns out Lucy lives in Cambridge just a few miles from me, and 64 years ago she knew my closest childhood friend, Carol Olmsted, who died in 2000 at 56 of breast cancer.

In her email, Lucy wrote: "On a Google search to find the whereabouts of an old 'summertime friend' from NY, I came across the piece you wrote some years ago about Carol Olmsted. I was saddened to see that she died so very young. I remember her very much as she appeared in the cheerleader photo you included.

"Carol and I were both 14 the summer we met when our families had summer cabins near each other in the Adirondacks. She was 6 months older and probably a year ahead of me in school, although I never asked; also we didn't keep in touch over the winters. But she was the closest in age to me of the 'summer girls' and we were glad to spend time together."

Lucy continued: "My parents, originally from Queens NYC, loved the Adirondacks and after camping with the family there in the late 1940s and through the 50s, they had a tiny cabin built on a little plot of land they bought in Lake Pleasant. We had beach rights to Lake Pleasant itself and over a few years, other families built summer cabins along the strip of road where my family had our camp.

"The Olmsteds came later by a few years; there were several other families with kids and we all spent happy hours at the tiny beach through July and August. The moms seemed to stay the summer and the dads would join weekends from wherever home base was.

"I remember Lois Olmstead as a lovely lady, like her daughter. My own mother was not working some of those years and my dad, a clergyman in Queens, had the month of August off, so we had much family time there at the camp.

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"Some evenings there were game nights at one of the camps; I remember spending time with Carol's siblings Barbara, and David. We were all so close in age.

A natural beauty

"I remember Carol as being such a natural beauty, easy going, and with a beautiful singing voice; I can still see her swinging down the dirt road toward the beach, towel around her shoulders, singing out unselfconsciously some popular song or another.

"I can't say I remember much after the summers of our 16th years ... by college age we had lost touch. Over the years I've wondered what happened to the family.

"They were in Rochester and we were in NYC, so we didn't 'bump into each other.'  I write just to thank you for having written this memory and provided a connection to a lovely lady with whom I had brief acquaintance and had lost touch. And her early death – a reminder of how fleeting life can be."

Two years ago, Carol's younger sister, Barb, and I had renewed contact and I shared Lucy's message with her.

"I think I remember her family in one of the small cabins right near the road to the lake," Barb wrote back. "She said such nice things about us. I have many fond family memories of those days."

I told Lucy that from age 12 through high school, I was often a guest of the Olmsted family in their small but comfortable year-round cabin in Speculator, New York, which Carol's father, Tink, had built. It had a wood stove; Tink chopped the wood. My stays were always in the winter, since my summers were spent at home on Lake Ontario and in YWCA camp.

Lucy described her path in life as an artist, an art teacher in Boston public schools, a former Peace Corps volunteer teacher in Africa, an administrator at MIT and now a member of a memoir writing group for retirees at MIT.

I was surprised and pleased to receive this reconnection. It turns out there is one more. One of Lucy's good friends is former Patriot Ledger reporter and feature writer Lane Lambert, who retired several years ago, and it was fun to hear of his new ventures as a writer.

When we find a way to connect people past and present, we revive memories that are still important years later. They remind us of where we came from and those who helped support and form us.

Thank you, Carol, and thank you, Lucy.

What's in a name?

A recent column about my tripping and falling in the woods brought this unusual response.

"Sue, I happened upon your article because I'm an old hiker/backpacker suffering from balance issues. I was struck by your last name. There aren't very many of us. My roots are in Iowa."  – Bill Scheible, Portland, Oregon

Bill and I had fun exchanging information about various relatives, Midwest clues and decided we probably are connected somewhere. Bill is about my age. You never know!

Reach Sue Scheible at sscheible@patriotledger.com.

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This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Childhood friendship leaves lasting memories for Cambridge writer