ALTAMONT – Carolyn Day of Providence, Rhode Island was introduced to Stephen Wilson by his college roommate as a blind date for a rainy Dartmouth-Harvard football game, some 61 years ago. He later told that former, now late roommate, “When she met me at her apartment door, I concluded that I had the wrong Marlboro Street address in Boston, because she was way too beautiful!”

This Thursday, our Diamond Anniversary, we are hunkering down at the same beautiful former dairy farm, overlooking the Watervliet Reservoir, which we purchased 54 years ago.

During last Tuesday’s “Family Zoom,” we reflected on how lucky we are that our three daughters — Karen Gunderson and husband, Chris, and grandson, Max, from Austin, Texas; Jennifer Seretan and husband, Cliff, and granddaughter, Kira, from Lake Oswego, Oregon; and Sarah Wilson and her partner, Gilles Cappelle, both from Frederick, Maryland — can join us every week.

Since her retirement from the staff of the Albany Institute of History and Art, Carolyn has been volunteering for Community Caregivers and bottling, labeling, and marketing Wilsons’ Raw Honey, keeping gardens, and much more.

Stephen tends his bees, works on fundraising for honey bee health research, after his fourth retirement from directing the Hudson River Environmental Society. In 1966, he had brought his, then, small family from Colgate University to Altamont, to become one of the founding geography faculty at the University at Albany.

Today, we are so thankful that our daughters were able to keep horses here, to graduate from Guilderland schools, also for our wonderful Altamont neighbors, and for our friends in our “Group” and many more.

— Carolyn and Stephen Wilson