This has been a week where I have unexpectedly walked down family history lane.  That continued this morning when I went over to assist in the installation of my Mom’s new fridge.  She showed me a newspaper clipping from the February 6 edition of the Boone News Republican.

The clipping was part of the column Kelley’s Korner. It read:

We heard from lots of folks this week, many from this area and a few from afar… one clear down in Luther.

We talked awhile back about the Centennial production and conjunctive beard contest and that brought a reply from Jacksonville, Fla. of all places.

Former residents Terry and Sheryl Johnson left Boone four years ago to reside in Jacksonville and, by the way, in August, they’ll celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary.

Terry and I worked together many years ago at the “older” BN-R.

Anyway, Sheryl, the former Sheryl Paris, recalled how she and Terry were kidnapped following their wedding ceremony, Aug. 27, 1965.

Yes, a group of Boone men dressed as bearded “Keystone Cops” captured the pair and drove them down the center of Story Street with sirens blasting and red lights flashing.

Their wedding worked, unknowingly, right into the Centennial scene.

Sheryl said, “We were put in a portable jail cell and released only after we were interviewed in front of a large crowd of folks shopping in downtown on a Friday night. Wasn’t that the greatest? All the many stores open and people doing lots of visiting as well as shopping.”

Sheryl said that lots of people thought their little excursion was a rehearsed thing. It wasn’t. It was organized by her brother-in-law, Gerald Bennett.

Gerald was one of the candidates in that beard contest that was part of the Centennial.

This was a family story that I did not know, but it is one that I will have to add to the family story repertoire. A fitting conclusion to a week that started with telling Jen a series of family stories (The Secret Wedding, Grandpa Firing Dad, The Half-Sister, Cousin Troy Comes to Teresa’s Wedding to name a few…) and is certainly more heartwarming than the “You’ve Eaten. That is what you were here for. Get out!” story that I told Shannon during the kitchen downsizing on Wednesday.