It's small world after all, readers agree

September 16, 2012 12:10 am

IN EARLY AUGUST I told stories here about those "small world" meetings that seem to happen to all who travel.

It proved a popular topic, and I followed that one with readers' own small world stories. But some of those accounts came in too late to make that column, so here are a few more tales of readers discovering what a truly small world it is, after all.

What surprised me was that most who wrote shared not one but several such encounters.

Laura "Randy" Fennemore of Fredericksburg tells about the time her son, George, was wearing Mary Washington College exercise shorts while working out in a gym in Boulder, Colo.

A woman approached and asked if he knew about Fredericksburg. He told her it was his hometown.

Turns out that not only did she live in Fredericksburg, but was a friend of one of the ladies who worked in the college bookstore with Fennemore--in other words, there was a double connection.

Frank White had a career in the U.S. Air Force, which seems to have provided him with an almost endless number of small world encounters.

My favorite involved Frank's wife. He had married in 1963, and the following year he and his wife, Dorothy, moved to his new station at Yokota Air Base, Japan.

One day at the base exchange there, she heard someone speak her name, Dorothy Poole.

Spinning around, she saw Jerry Williamson and James Jones, both of whom had graduated with her from Dillard High School in Yanceyville, N.C., in 1959.

That shouldn't surprise me, really, since several readers said their military service provided almost routine small world meetings.

Betsy Labar had a most unusual story to tell from a chance encounter at a restaurant in Brugge, Belgium.

She is the special events manager at Belmont, Gari Melchers' home and gallery (and beautiful grounds) in Falmouth.

In April, she traveled with the Friends of Belmont group to Holland and Belgium, where the renowned artist had lived and painted.

"Our last night in Belgium," writes Labar, "We enjoyed a group dinner near our hotel in Brugge. I was sitting next to an American gentleman who was dining alone, and we struck up a conversation. I explained that our group was from Fredericksburg.

He replied that he knew "a wonderful art museum there," a reference to the Belmont gallery.

"Not only was he acquainted with our museum," said Labar, "but his family owns two of Melchers' original paintings! What makes it even more interesting is that we were familiar with one of the paintings but didn't know who owned it, and we had never seen the other one!"

That story speaks for itself, not only of what a small world it turns out to be, but how important those connections we make can end up being. Think of it. But for a chance chat with a stranger, in a restaurant half a world away, Belmont might never have learned important information about two Gari Melchers works.

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Paul Sullivan of Spotsylvania County, a former reporter with The Free Lance-Star, is a freelance writer. Email him at PBSullivan2@cs.com.