Tribune Column: Funny Things from Yesterday
Today’s article is not a funny, but a sad loss of a dear friend
Rudene and I met a couple in Frankweiler, Germany, Basil and Ingrid Holmes, and they became very dear friends to us. We met in 1987 when we twinned Cullman and Frankweiler as sister cities. Ingrid was the translator for the Cullman people.
Basil was a retired British military officer and Ingrid is German.
In 1988, a group of about 50 people came to Cullman from Frankweiler. Basil and Ingrid did not realize that the Greyhound bus line was just a transport bus; they thought it was a tourist bus. They had bought tickets for a trip to California and back.
During the trip one of their suitcases got lost on the trip out and the bus line sent it back to Cullman. When Basil found out that the suitcase had been sent back to Cullman, he called me and asked me to pick it up and hold it for them.
When they arrived back in Cullman, they still had three days before their flight was to leave back to Germany. We invited them to stay at our house until their plane departed. They were glad to stay with us. From that day on we were very good friends.
Rudene and I have made many trips to visit with them and we traveled over most of Western Europe, into North Africa and some in the Middle East. They have visited us, and we traveled in the U.S. and sailed to Alaska and Hawaii.
Basil and Ingrid were dear friends, but on the 10th of this month, he passed away. He had been in poor health for quite some time and had been in and out of the hospital.
He was a dear friend and we are deeply saddened. We loved you and will miss you, Dear Friend.
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