"Roads Go Ever, Ever On" - The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings

We were called the Garfield Gashouse Gang when we went to junior high.
Our elementary school produced engineers, lawyers, a doctor, an opera star,
a Broadway performer, teachers, and a psychologist.

When unpacking at our new home, I came across the high school newspaper that listed which colleges we were going to attend. There was my name, listing Augustana in Rock Island, where my mother graduated.

I thought, "How odd." That college choice meant I met the future Mrs. I. on the first day in class. We  married a few minutes after graduating from Augie. Because Chris' relatives lived in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, I had an interest in their seminary and went there. That led to Yale, because of a professor who came to visit the seminary and write a report on it.

There are many other coincidences, such as my sister-in-law babysitting for Stan Hauerwas, when he went from Augie to Notre Dame. She encouraged me to visit Stan, where I gleaned enough to apply there. One feature was - no application fee! I saved money by not applying anywhere else.

Notre Dame gave me access to an entire Protestant library they bought from a seminary closing, so I had the chance to study American Lutheran church history, doctrinal statements, the Social Gospel movement, and more. That opened my eyes to the gap between LCA claims and Lutheran doctrine.

My mother's class, two years younger than my own.
I hear from two of these families all the time, on Facebook.