Dedicated to Daniel Matz
Submitted by Melody
When I was in the seventh grade at Sill Junior High School, I met a guy that would turn out to be my future husband and my first love, my first everything. We went on a few dates periodically during junior high and high school. After graduation Danny moved away and joined the Air Force and I met a man and moved to West Virgina and eventually married and had three beautiful daughters with him. After 14 years of being married to my first husband, our marriage was coming to an end. Ironically, Danny and his first wife who had three boys together, were also going through a divorce. Fate stepped in when a mutual friend of Danny and mine saw him in the mall; mind you that they haven’t seen eachother in almost seventeen years! Kim convinced him to give me a call while they were there together and when he did call me we talked and talked, and talked. He told me he had married someone from South Carolina and they had 3 boys togehter and they were also in the midst of seperation. After our long conversation we exchanged numbers and talked on the phone every day throughout the month on January. As fate would have it, on Valentine’s day of 1998, he made the long trip from South Carolina to Ohio to reunite with his first love. That night, when we went to dinner to catch up on old times, we had our VERY first dance ever to the song “MY VALENTINE by MARTINA MCBRIDE” on Valentine’s Day. I was so happy to be with hime. Amazed. I realized that it was like we had never been apart. We fell in love all over again. A deep love that can never be explained. The rest is history. We since then have been married for 10 years and had a son, MY FIRST, who is now 7, and had a daughter, HIS FIRST, who is now 3. So together in our big blended family we have 8 beautiful children between us! Who would have thought. And by the way we are now expecting our FIRST grand child by my oldest daughter in May. People often refer to us as the “modern day Brady Bunch”, but we were going for “eight is enough”! Afer all we have been through, I still get butterflies when he comes home and I feel just as deeply in love with him as I did when we first met almost 30 years ago! He is and has always been my first and last love!!!! Our 10 year wedding anniversary is coming up on September 7, 2009 and we can only DREAM we could have it in HAWAII with all of our children with us.