Geneva woman reunites with pen pal she hasn’t heard from since 1975

Chances are, people who had pen pals as teens stayed connected with those friends later in life. Other times, pen pals fade away as a distant memory in which you have no idea how their lives turned out.

For JoEllen O’Brien of Geneva, it was a different twist. She had been wondering about her pen pal from Taiwan since they last saw each other in 1969 — and a search triggered by recently seeing one of her pen pal’s last letters resulted in the most unlikely reunion.

That letter, sent to O’Brien in 1975 from pen pal Eiko Terao, was the last correspondence she received. Because she couldn’t make out the return address at that time, her pen pal drifted off as a pleasant memory — but not a distant one, as O’Brien often wondered about how to find her.

“Eiko married a man from Japan, whom she met in the states, and moved back to Japan, and I was trying to find her even before I recently found this envelope from 1975,” O’Brien said. “The letter went to Rochester, New York, where my husband and I lived the year after we got married. I was trying to figure out how I could find her.

“I thought I should maybe just Google her name with the word Japan, where she was born, which I thought was crazy, but her name and photo came up,” said O’Brien, who also found her friend’s phone number.

The memories came rushing back, with the thoughts of possibly finding her pen pal again after more than 50 years.

She knew Eiko’s family had moved to Taiwan from Japan, because O’Brien had an aunt who worked in the American Embassy in Taiwan. It was that aunt who knew JoEllen had other pen pals and suggested, in the early 1960s, that O’Brien hook up with someone of her age as a pen pal through an International Rotary program.

“Eiko lived in Taipei, Taiwan, when I wrote to her when we were about 16 and in high school,” said O’Brien, who noted both she and Eiko were born in 1945.

The pen pal relationship went further in that Eiko Terao, taking the American name of Agnes, began visiting O’Brien in the U.S. The first visit was to get acclimated to Kent State in Ohio, where she wanted to study for a master’s degree.

Terao chose Kent State because she was familiar with Ohio, knowing her pen pal grew up near Cleveland. She later came to the Cleveland area to attend O’Brien’s brother’s wedding in 1967 and her sister’s in 1969.

After that, the girls went on with their adult lives.

JoEllen met her future husband, Joe O’Brien, in West Berlin in 1972 when traveling with friends from Georgetown Hospital. She met Joe at a party near the Army base where his unit was stationed, and the two were married in 1974.

Thus began a virtual game of pinball in terms of how many times JoEllen and Eiko moved, making communication even more difficult.

How it came to be that they both ended up in the same state, about an hour’s drive apart, is a sort of a “Where’s Waldo” story itself. But that’s what JoEllen’s Google search ultimately discovered. Her beloved pen pal was living in Lake Forest and working for International Rotary Corp. in Evanston as an international interpreter for Asian countries.

It was no surprise they lost touch. First, after sending that 1975 letter, Eiko had forgotten JoEllen’s married name of O’Brien, knowing only her maiden name of Martin, thus hampering any social media search.

In the meantime, Eiko and her husband moved back to Japan, then to Malaysia, then back to Japan, and on to England, before moving to Illinois in 1988.

Joe and JoEllen O’Brien were on the move often themselves, living in Rochester when they got married, then moving as Joe’s company, Kodak, dictated. It was Pittsburgh for eight years, back to New York for five years, Michigan for three years, back to New York for four years and finally to Geneva in 1995, where they have been since.

“I called her home phone number and left a message, and told her who I was,” JoEllen said. “She wasn’t sure about it, thinking it might be a scam, and didn’t answer or call back.”

With encouragement from her sister to try again, JoEllen made the call and connected with Eiko.

“I got her on the phone and we talked, and everything came back to us,” she said. “The whole thing about being pen pals, my aunt Judy, the time we spent together, all of it.”

A reunion meeting was a definite must, and the ladies arranged to meet July 17 at Golden Brunch restaurant in Arlington Heights.

“We couldn’t believe it. We were hugging each other, and thinking what were the chances we’d ever meet again?” JoEllen said.

In many ways it was simply a live, albeit longer, version of their past letters about school, friends, family, work and other things in their lives. And there will no longer be a lost connection.

“Oh, my gosh, we were laughing and telling each other stories,” JoEllen said of a reunion that was years in the making.

“We agreed to call each other and meet again.”

Geneva Winery expansion

Wine lovers were reacting positively to the news that Geneva Winery would be buying the Vintage 53 wine, cocktail and charcuterie bar in downtown St. Charles.

Calling it an “exciting partnership that brings together the best of both worlds,” Geneva Winery was definitely playing on the popularity of Geneva Winery and Vintage 53 brands in the Tri-Cities region.

The acquisition means that, in addition to Geneva Winery and Vintage 53 wines being available at the 162 S. First St. site, it won’t be long before Vintage 53’s popular cheese and charcuterie offerings and cocktail creations become part of the offerings at Geneva Winery’s Batavia and Geneva locations

Quick history lesson

Pondering what our Founding Fathers really had in mind when they declared their new nation’s independence all those years ago comes up in conversations more these days and, of course, in heated political debates.

There’s really no reason to ponder. Our Declaration of Independence has been available in various print or digital forms to read for many years.

But it can all be made easier when a historian explains what this document is all about.

Joyce Haworth will do that at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 13, at the St. Charles Public Library, examining the Declaration of Independence “phrase by phrase” to reveal its historical context, meaning and significance, library program planners said in a press release.

Attendees will also learn of the document’s “three declarations” and how those ideas shaped the American Revolution.

Haworth, who holds a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, has provided lectures about early American history for more than 20 years at community colleges, libraries, senior centers and other settings.

Register at scpld.org or by calling (630) 584-0076.

Meeting hilarious ‘Bluey’

When “Bluey,” the star character of the popular TV cartoon series by the same name, is going to make her way over to Northwestern Medicine Field for a Kane County Cougars game, you can be sure plenty of young kids will follow.

And they did. The Cougars reported that 7,500 fans, most of them kids, attended last Sunday’s game against Sioux Falls.

We got in on the action so the granddaughters could see their favorite cartoon character — and take in their first live baseball game.

Bluey and the Kids Zone at the stadium got more attention than the game, as it should be.

We stood in a long line, the kind you would see at Disney World, for the kids to have their photo taken with Bluey. It was a happy ending when we were among the final few groups to take part in the photo opp before Bluey called it a day at 4 p.m.

Watching about four innings of the game, eating hot dogs, and navigating the crowded concourse of the stadium wore us all out.

It was worth the trip, I assure you.

dheun@sbcglobal.net