Condolences to Alan Hopewell

In case you missed it, our good friend and longtime blog contributor Alan Hopewell lost his beloved wife Tracy about a week ago. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Alan during this difficult time.

Alan shared his reminisce about how he and Tracy first met on this 2019 post. "In 2006, a friend suggested that I get a Yahoo account to help with finding a job. Soon, I had the email addresses of several family members.

"One afternoon, I was at the Main Library in Cleveland, and I was going to send a still from a monster movie to my younger brother, who's also a horror fan. Well, I messed up, and wound up sending the email to everyone on my list. When I checked my emails the next day, there was a message from a cousin, telling me about a website that dealt in nostalgia, movies, comics, toys, like that.

"I signed up, and began getting into discussions with other members, including a lady who went by the name Beatles 4Ever. She intrigued me from the beginning, and I looked forward to talking to her online. She told me about herself: her real name (Tracy), where she was from (Whitney, Texas), and other things that became a lovely conversation. Posts becoming emails, emails becoming eCards, which turned into phone calls, which became long, long letters, etc.

"We both realized that we had to do something about this.

"Summer of '08, she spent a weekend with me in Cleveland, and after several months of missing each other, we decided I'd come to Texas, to be with her, and to escape the North Coast winters. I've never regretted it, and I don't see that I ever will."

Alan's strong faith will help see him through this sad time. We look forward to more of his great observations and reminisces here on the blog.