By Joe III
Sue and I met on December 22, 1963. That night I was ice-skating on the lake at Valley Stream State Park. Sue’s father had driven Sue and a girlfriend to two other ponds near their home in Franklin Square but neither pond was frozen. As a last resort they tried the lake at Valley Stream.

It was a cold night and the place was crowded, mostly with kids. I remember a couple of barrels with fires by the side of the lake. People would occasionally take a break from skating to warm up by the fire. On the ice there was a large group of kids doing “whips.” Whips are where a bunch of people join hands; then the people at one end quickly turn in a tight circle to whip the people at the other end off at great speed.

I had just come off a whip when I spied Sue skating out onto the ice. I casually skated by and swiped the headband she was wearing off her head. She took off after me and I circled back to return it to her. Then I grabbed her hand and skated her over to join the whipping-end of a whip that was just forming. They whipped us off into the north side of the lake and we flew along about fifty yards. It’s a rush to be speeding along at that speed and Sue must have been a bit nervous about it but she was laughing at the end.

After that we skated around a while and then went and stood by one of the burning barrels to get warm. That’s when we agreed to meet for lunch the next day at Green Acres mall. (I still had Christmas shopping to do.) When we finished shopping I walked her home and asked her if she’d go to a movie with me in a few days. That’s how we started dating.

Six years and four months later we were married.

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Sue and Joe dating in 1965

Joe and Sue moved into a house in 1975