It wasn’t all bad
■ A group of 27 kayakers was rescued from a cave on Nickajack Lake, near Chattanooga, Tenn., last month. The kayakers, part of a tour group, started to face high winds after leaving the boat ramp at about 8:30 p.m., and were stranded when conditions worsened. From the cave, they managed to call for emergency assistance, triggering a multi-agency rescue operation. Haletown’s volunteer fire department brought a boat to help with the evacuation, but strong winds flipped it before it got disconnected from the trailer. Rescuers still managed to bring all of the kayakers back without any injuries.
■ The first solar eclipse that LaVerne Biser saw was in Maine in 1963, and it required packing his family into the station wagon for a 2,000-mile trip from their home in Fort Worth. Now 105 years old, Biser will be watching this month’s solar eclipse from home as it passes right over Texas. It will be the 13th eclipse, and the 10th total eclipse, that Biser has witnessed in six decades of chasing. He’s watched eclipses from the Black Sea near Russia and a cruise ship off Brazil—all but one of them with his wife, Marion, who died last year at age 97. Each time he has been left in awe. “During an eclipse,” Biser said, “you feel connected to the universe.”
■ Elaine Hall and Roland Passaro, an 88-year-old couple from Allentown, Pa., had crushes on each other while in high school. Passaro graduated, then went to college and worked in Miami while raising three kids with his then-wife. Hall, who remained in Allentown, worked for a local newspaper and raised three kids before divorcing in her 40s. At a 2003 high school reunion, they reconnected. After falling in love (again) and dating for a year, they moved in together before getting engaged last October. And last month, they finally got married in Palm Coast, Fla. “We all have a special place in our hearts for our first big crush, and he was mine,” said Hall.