things you don’t know about people

I’ve often been struck by how frequently facts emerge about people we’ve known for awhile that utterly amaze us. Yesterday, for instance, I was shown an internal university news article about a friendly Senate colleague, an American woman. She and her late first husband rowed across the Atlantic Ocean and then the Pacific Ocean, the first couple ever to do so. WHAT?!

At first I thought “rowing” must have been meant in a loose sense, meaning only that they toughed it out in a small boat. But then she happened to call a few minutes later on Senate business, and I asked her about it, and they literally rowed with paddles, taking turns. The Pacific trip took a year.

How did this never come up during all of my conversations with Kathleen over the years? And this sort of ignorance about colleagues we know well comes up quite often, I find.

Here’s a weblink on the story:

http://www.hwwilson.com/Currentbio/rowing.html

Curtis, unfortunately, became lost on a Sinai hike during my first year in Egypt, and was found by Bedouins too late to be saved. He taught rhetoric & composition at the University, as Kathleen still does.