Who Is Us?
Paul was married to Sue for over thirty-one years when the good Lord took her from us and sent her home. It was February 19th 2020, when the Lord took her and brought her peace from the pain she was suffering with for the last five years. Because of COVID we were finally able to put her to rest September 24th, 2022.
In July of that year a dear friend, Jan Mongell, called and mentioned that Dr. Mary Côté, a long term mutual friend was also alone. Paul gave Mary a call and asked if she would like to go to dinner on the 28th of July 2020. One year later, July 28th 2021, we were married in Seal Beach at the restaurant where we had our first "date".
Jan brought us together!
Sue, Mary and Paul were friends for over twenty years having met at the Starlighter's Dance Club in Orange County. We traveled to Catalina and went on the wine trains together and saw each other every other month for twenty years.
Long time friends!
Just A Note Of Explanation
Paul chose to retain Sue's memories on this page because she made him who he is and he is proud of that. Mary, a friend for over two decades, brought Paul from the depths of despair to wanting to live life to the fullest again. Will Paul erase history? It is a resounding NO!
I am adjusting this website site for Mary to be added as she is an amazing person who Paul adores with all his heart. Sue will never be forgotten. Paul is blessed to have known two great ladies in his life
I love one of Mary's favorite sayings, "I love Sue, she trained him well".. To which I say, Mary, I am still in training!"
Just Simple Americans Who Worked Hard And Are Now Enjoying
Check the Daily Diary
We were just average American's. Paul was born in 1944, Sue in 1951, and Mary in 1952. We worked hard, now we play hard, and try to make the world a little better place by our actions!
Sue passed in 2020 and Paul remarried in 2021 to Dr. Mary Côté and we have been together ever since. Mary is an MD and served our military people and veterans for almost 40 years in Germany and at the Long Beach VA. She was also on staff at UCI teaching generations of eye surgeons how to do it right. She had her own practice but as of Thanksgiving, 2021, she retired and now is enjoying life.
We have written a few pages about "us"... likely of no interest to others than our family and friends. Paul's family has embraced Mary with open arms.
Mary and Paul's friends are common as we knew each other for almost a quarter of a century. Paul's friends are her friends and her friend are Paul's.
Sue and Paul lived in Zip code 90720.
Mary and Paul now live in Zip code 90869
Sue & Paul's Hometown Was Rossmoor California For Thirty-Three Years
Rossmoor is a planned census-designated place located in Orange County, California. As of the 2020 census, the CDP had a total population of 10,625 up from the 2010 census population of 10,244. The gated Leisure World retirement community in the city of Seal Beach is to the south of Rossmoor, Los Alamitos is to the east and north, and Long Beach is to the west (on the other side of the San Gabriel River, the 605 freeway and the border with Los Angeles County).
The community of Rossmoor has two shopping centers within its boundaries, but only one—the Rossmoor Village Square, is now within the political boundaries of Rossmoor. A larger shopping center, the Rossmoor Business Center, was annexed, despite many protests, by the City of Seal Beach in 1967. The Center has been remodeled several times and was renamed the Shops at Rossmoor in the early 2000s.
Paul Moved To Orange With Mary In 2021
Orange is a city located in North Orange County, California. It is approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) north of the county seat, Santa Ana. Orange is unusual in this region because many of the homes in its Old Town District were built before 1920. While many other cities in the region demolished such houses in the 1960s, Orange decided to preserve them. The small city of Villa Park is surrounded by the city of Orange. The population was 139,911 as of 2020.
Last Of The Good Guys!
Paul was born 1944
Sue was born 1951
Mary was born in 1952
Children of the 1930's & 1940's"
- The Last Ones"
* Our beloved parents instilled in each of us their values and experiences living through the 1930's and 1940's so we understand the meaning of "the last one's"
Born in the 1930's and early 1940's, we exist as a very special age cohort. We are the "last ones." We are the last, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the war itself with fathers and uncles going off. We are the last to remember ration books for everything from sugar to shoes to stoves. We saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans. We saw cars up on blocks because tires weren't available. My mother delivered milk in a horse drawn cart.
We are the last to hear Roosevelt's radio assurances and to see gold stars in the front windows of our grieving neighbors. We can also remember the parades on August 15, 1945; VJ Day.
Things We Remember:
We saw the 'boys' home from the war build their Cape Cod style houses, pouring the cellar, tar papering it over and living there until they could afford the time and money to build it out.
We are the last who spent childhood without television; instead imagining what we heard on the radio. As we all like to brag, with no TV, we spent our childhood "playing outside until the street lights came on." We did play outside and we did play on our own. There was no little league.
The lack of television in our early years meant, for most of us, that we had little real understanding of what the world was like. Our Saturday afternoons, if at the movies, gave us newsreels of the war and the holocaust sandwiched in between westerns and cartoons. Newspapers and magazines were written for adults. We are the last who had to find out for ourselves.
As we grew up, the country was exploding with growth. The G.I. Bill gave returning veterans the means to get an education and spurred colleges to grow. VA loans fanned a housing boom. Pent up demand coupled with new installment payment plans put factories to work. New highways would bring jobs and mobility. The veterans joined civic clubs and became active in politics. In the late 40's and early 50's the country seemed to lie in the embrace of brisk but quiet order as it gave birth to its new middle class. Our parents understandably became absorbed with their own new lives. They were free from the confines of the depression and the war. They threw themselves into exploring opportunities they had never imagined.
We weren't neglected but we weren't today's all-consuming family focus. They were glad we played by ourselves 'until the street lights came on.' They were busy discovering the post war world.
Most of us had no life plan, but with the unexpected virtue of ignorance and an economic rising tide we simply stepped into the world and went to find out. We entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where we were welcomed. Based on our naïve belief that there was more where this came from, we shaped life as we went.
We enjoyed a luxury; we felt secure in our future. Of course, just as today, not all Americans shared in this experience. Depression poverty was deep rooted. Polio was still a crippler. The Korean War was a dark presage in the early 1950's and by mid-decade school children were ducking under desks. China became Red China. Eisenhower sent the first "advisors" to Vietnam. Castro set up camp in Cuba and Khrushchev came to power.
We are the last to experience an interlude when there were no existential threats to our homeland. We came of age in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The war was over and the cold war, terrorism, climate change, technological upheaval and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with insistent unease.
Only we can remember both a time of apocalyptic war and a time when our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty. We experienced both.
We grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better not worse.
We did not have it easy. Our wages were low, we did without, we lived within our means, we worked hard to get a job, and harder still to keep it. Things that today are considered necessities, we considered unreachable luxuries. We made things last. We fixed, rather than replaced. We had values and did not take for granted that "Somebody will take care of us". We cared for ourselves and we also cared for others.
We are the 'last ones.'
Paul & Sue's Beliefs Are Simple
Just us at the Harlem Globetrotters Game at the Honda
Center celebrating Cousin Kat's 85th birthday
"We believe in and practice romance. Being married to your best friend makes this easy! In fact, Romance R' Us is a favorite place to go! Now we work hard at being retired!
We came from pretty diverse backgrounds! We won't tell you our age but together we were over 145 years old (2020) when Sue passed; mostly because of Paul!!! We have kids and grandkids and five great grand babies!
Our parents are all gone so it is just us and we miss them so much especially during the holidays and in times of crisis. But that is the way of the world. Thank goodness we have our faith and each other!
Sue is from New York and Paul is a California native! . Paul was born on December 16th and Sue was born on July 10th . You have to guess the year! Sue passed just before her 70th birthday. Paul in his late seventies. So you understand where we are coming from.
Mary & Paul Shared The Same Beliefs
Getting married 7/28/2021 at Patty's Place in Seal Beach!
Mary and Paul are now retired and enjoying life as never before.
Mary was a native of Oregon and was born May 26th.
We traveled a lot before we retired and frankly we have zero desire to travel now!
There are too may wonderful sights and amazing people to see right here in the USA!
Share some of the fun things we do and places we go including golf and dancing.
Our Website Keeps Track Of Our Lives Together
Sue & Paul at the 2007 Tomatoes in northern California.
This evening we are at the Hot Tomato Ball having
cocktails before an evening of dancing!
Our website is rather large and we have fun sharing with the family and friends. It is well over 22,000 pages and about 87GB to date!
Good place to start is the Homepage. It is a work of love (and it keeps Paul out of the
bars at night!).
Our ISP is located in New Jersey and we have had them for many years... great outfit called Host Rocket.
We are currently redesigning the site to be CSS/HTML5 compatible so you may see a few "brokes" as all 12,000 pages that must be touched!
We take a load of digital pictures and place selected ones on the site to share with family and friends. Please
enjoy all the nonsense.
Searching The Site
The site is fairly large with nearly 22,000 pages so we established our own search engine written in Perl and it runs every night at 2:00 am finding the latest changes, additions, and doing the deletions. Please use it.
Schooling and Careers
Sue & Paul went to school in the Los Angeles area during a period of time where school was important, our moms and dads were all over us to perform and the teacher was an important person in our lives. Bad grades were not acceptable and there were consequences for our actions.
Mary went to school through most of high school in Oregon.
We left college and headed for our careers. Sue taught for a year and moved to Rockwell. Paul started with
North American Aviation in his junior year at USC in order to pay for the tuition! We never changed jobs and
in fact we had almost 75 years with Boeing (Rockwell/North American Aviation) when we pulled
the plug and retired! We did it our way!
Mary was born in Oregon and had a rough life with a broken family. She was and is a strong woman who defied the typical outcomes and became a medical doctor and served in the US Army for eight years as a general surgeon before specializing in opthalmology so she could spend time with her children.
Home ... Is Where The heart Is
Los Alamitos area was Sue and Paul's home and in fact Sue has lived in the area for most of her life! We lived in a little un-incorporated city in Orange Country called Rossmoor . It's was small house but plenty big enough for us and the baby dogs. We even had a vegetable garden which operated all year long. The real beauty was the fact it was three miles from our work! Super in Los Angeles, huh?
After Sue left us, Mary and I moved to Orange California into a new house which we are making a home little by little. It is twice the size of our previous homes and that was good since Mary lived in hers for 27 years and Paul in his for 33 years.
Please join us as we make a new life together.
The Real Bosses
We have two babies now. Mickey just left us in 2008 after
a two year bout with cancer. He was a brave little daddy dog!
Pinky also left us in 2008 after years of fighting sicknesses
We had Chihuahua's for years and miss them ever so much!
At one time we had six babies but they, like us, they grew older every day.
We recently lost three of the babies to old age. These little guys were senior citizens just like us! Our last baby, Little Flower, was nineteen when she passed in our arms! It was heartbreaking.
The babies were our family.
They have provided us so much joy and laughter over these years that it is our turn to make them as comfortable as can
be as they reach their senior-citizenship!
Valentine The Mommy Dog
Valentine was our "mommy dog" and she was just the light of our life. She had a personality that one cannot easily describe. She never wanted her feet wet... She would walk around or jump across puddles and on rainy days, no outside for her!
She was capable of making the most god-awful noises. When we went to the vet, she sounded like a chicken and we were often asked, "What kind of a pet do you have in the bag?"
Her husband was Mickey who just passed away in 2008 and that relationship was just like people. When Valentine got mad at Mickey, she would yell at him and he world sulk around for days!
When we travel, they even have their own nanny, Auntie Laurie, who came and stayed with them.
The babies have since passed and were in-turned into the sea with their mommy October 25th 2022.
Scout Comes Into The Picture
Scout, The Wonder Dog, was Mary's baby and over the last year he adopted Paul as his daddy; he is an amazing dog.
There is our baby!
Sue was diagnosed with cancer so we have been busy fighting it and, thanks to the grace of God, winning the battle! It's been almost twelve years since the diagnosis and we continue to pray for total remission. Cancer Update! Sue's doctor, Dr. Mark Janis, refers to her as the Small Cell Cancer Poster Girl for her amazing recovery!
To celebrate, we went to Disneyland every year on the date we found out about the cancer...
We called it "Life Day".
More recently, Sue recovered from a major spinal correction operation so we could get back to dancing and out of the
wheelchair. Spinal Operation Update!
You got to see the before and after X-rays! As of 2007, Sue and I danced four days a week and playing golf the rest of the week!
But as expected, the "energizer bunny" came roaring back and now we dance three or four nights a week and play golf four days a week.
As of 2016 we have both had triple heart bypass surgery. It is nice to get an overhaul so we can finish out life chugging right on down the avenue!
In 2017, things took a turn for the worse. Sue suffered from several ailments and the pain was intense. From 2018 until her passing in 2020, life was difficult at best but she was a trooper and kept moving forward. The good Lord took he home in February 2020.
Paul was diagnosed with prostate cancer in May of 2022 and had it removed in October 2022 in Detroit by a friend of the family.
Romance Makes The World Go Around
We thoroughly enjoy life and ourselves! It is a wonderful thing when one falls in love with their best friend and get the opportunity to share lives loving every minute it brings! We are hopeless romantics!
Had we known each other as kids, this would have been us!
Lessons Learned
This presentation sums it up!
More Things To Think About
Paul learned a lot in the past thirty+ years. Some of those lessons and observations have been collected in a set of Power-point presentations. Watch a great set of Power Point files (put into presentation mode) that sums things up!
Family At Sue And Paul's Wedding (Otis, Sue, Paul & Georgia Circa 1988)
Please meet Otis, Sue, Paul, and Georgia at our wedding
Mary And Paul July 28th 2021
Pictures Say One Thousand Words
We love cruising!
When all else is gone, friends and family are all that count!
Law Of The Garbage Truck
One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport. We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. I mean he was really friendly.
So I asked, 'Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital! This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, 'The Law of the Garbage Truck.'
He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they'll dump it on you. D
on't take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don't take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets.
The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day. Life's too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so...Love the people who treat you right. Love the ones who don't.
Life is ten percent what you make it and ninety percent how you take it!
Have a blessed, garbage-free day!
We Love Our Pets
Sarge Said Hello Every Morning (He Passed In June 2012 At 17 Years Of Age)
Sarge getting his morning "uppies"
Scout is an amazing baby! Australian Shepherds love to be close to their family members. They will follow you everywhere, room to room, outside, and even to the bathroom. Having one can be like having a shadow, especially if you are your Aussie's "favorite person."
Scout was nine when he adopted Paul!
Thirty-one happy married years!
Eventhough Paul is 77, he promised Mary a solid twenty years of happy married life! Paul will work on that every day!
Sue & Paul On Our 26th Anniversary!
From our dear friends and next-door neighbors...
Mary & Paul On Our First Anniversary With Colleen On Her 50th Birthday 7/28/2022
Paul's familly has "adopted" Dr. Mary!