As with most of our stops, we've been blessed to meet up with special people in our lives. Nashville was no exception! After breakfast in Silverstreak on our first morning, we drove 40 minutes into Nashville to meet our friend, Lisa Dixon French (known as Lisa Dixon in Portland Symphony lexicon for her wonderful leadership of the organization a few years ago). Lisa,
CEO of the Nashville Ballet, gave us a tour of the impressive building housing many ballet studios for students ranging from early childhood to high school and beyond, then led us to a popular coffee shop close to her building. It was such fun to catch up on her life, Nashville from her perspective, as well as share news of the Portland area. Ironically, she and her husband, Michael, had just returned from Portland after attending the funeral of a mutual friend. It seemed like yesterday as we sat together sharing stories.
Our second special visit was with John and Carole Knubel. John is also a Naval Academy graduate, three years Ron's senior, and Rhodes Scholar. We have known the Knubels for 58 years. In fact, John takes credit for our marriage as he "loaned" Ron the money for the downpayment on Sally's engagement ring (Ron professed to be broke) and Carole told him to get on it! We had such a delightful time catching up over dinner, again feeling that we could just pick up where we left off, despite not having seen each other for over 12 years.
So ends this phase of our road trip that was more focused more on seeing friends, less on seeing the sights. We will have the opportunity to do so again when we meet our kids and families in Washington state and other "old" friends in Big Sky, MT. It has been such a special feature of this journey and we are eternally grateful.
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