WEST LEBANON — There’s a big holiday coming up next Sunday, and an opportunity for us all to heal just a little more after a trying year for bodies and souls.
As Valley News photo editor Geoff Hansen found when he dug through our archives, Upper Valley residents, young and old, have always celebrated Valentine’s Day with enthusiasm, and often with a community spirit.
Daughters and dads — and these days mothers and sons, too — have enjoyed parent-child dances to mark the day and bring them closer together.
Schoolchildren have learned the importance of sharing valentine cards widely, to spread the joy and not leave anyone out.
Some seniors, like Catherine and Roger Muzzy, aka Pops, 50 years ago would make dozens of cakes at their home bakery in West Lebanon, with Catherine doing the baking and Roger handling the frosting.
And volunteers at Upper Valley hospitals have long stepped forward to make sure that bedridden patients don’t lose out, either.
Northfield, Vt., resident Mel Adams, 73, still remembers how a member of the White River Junction VFW Ladies Auxiliary delivered a valentine to him as he recovered from knee replacement surgery at the White River Junction VA Medical Center in February 2007.
Adams, who was working for the Vermont Agency of Transportation at the time and later served as town manager in Randolph, said his weeklong hospital stay was extended by a day or two because of a big snow storm, and that the Miss Vermont at the time also visited patients.
But, he said wryly, her demeanor changed when she found out he worked for VTrans.
” ‘When are you going to fix the pothole in front of my house,’ ” Adams recalled her saying.
“You can’t get away from it.”
Lebanon residents Gloria and Ray Laurie have fond memories of Valentine’s Day in 2006, when Ray ponied up and paid for a barbershop quartet to serenade Gloria with a singing valentine at her workplace in Wilder, Stave Puzzles.
“I was extremely surprised, and it kind of had a special meaning because I had been gravely ill a couple of years before that and I was just getting back to work,” Gloria recalled last week. “It just really touched me. Of course, he’s always been romantic anyway.”
Ray said he made the extra effort because his wife had been so ill.
“I felt very fortunate and grateful that I still had her, and I wanted to express that,” he said.
The couple will celebrate their 38th anniversary in April, so they know what they are doing when it comes to the heart. So use their example and put a little extra this year into showing your spouse, partner, children or older relatives what they mean to you.
And if, tragically, you have lost someone this past year, let the day remind you of the joy they did bring into your life. It’s a gift they would probably want to give you.
News staff writer John P. Gregg can be reached at jgregg@vnews.com.