Friends separated 48 years reunite through Sentinel story
In June 1963, Nancy Ziegler gave birth to a daughter, Laura. Back then she lived in an apartment in Seattle that overlooked the Old Rainier Ball Park. Soon after Laura was born, Ziegler needed to work at a part-time job.
Emily Conley, Nancy’s neighbor, had also had a daughter, Robin, born July of the same year. A friendship was quickly struck, although it would last a short time. Emily and her husband Dale moved their family back home to to Roosevelt in February of 1964. Ziegler and her family drove to Roosevelt to visit them that same summer. Baby pictures were exchanged throughout the next couple of years.
In 1968 Ziegler and her family moved to Texas. It was soon after this move that the two friends lost contact.
Fast forward to 2012. Ziegler had just come across some old pictures of her and Coley’s kids together from the mid 1960s, and the discovery ignited a search for a lost friend. While looking for the family on the internet, Ziegler just happened to find a story in The Goldendale Sentinel about the Brown triplets turning 10. The Brown triplets just happen to be Conley’s grandchildren.
That fired up the search. Ziegler got help with blog site that gave her more information. Robin, Conley’s daughter, happened to see the blog traffic and notified her mom, Emily.
Soon after, emails between Ziegler and Conley were finally flying back and forth, as the two friends—separated for 48 years—were back in touch with each other.
Plans are being made now for an in-person reunion.
“Even though we lived by each other for such a short time I have always felt a close bond,” Ziegler says. “Maybe it was young kids starting out in a big city, a new marriage, the first child, the first apartment, both of us trying to make ends meet. I had never forgotten her and her family. And I felt I would see them again. I think the short six months we had together must have been pretty special, to still want more after all these lost years.”