Flowers for a decadeslong story of love, carefully told

The flowers arrived two days before Valentine’s Day, pale pink roses, magenta carnations and lavender daisies in a purple vase.

They were from Sandy Mettille and Judy Neisch, cousins at the center of a story I was working on about how their mothers had sent the same card back and forth on Valentine’s Day for 71 years.

They really shouldn’t have. (Ethically, we’re not allowed to accept gifts.) But Mettille said they were grateful for the time I had spent researching their story.

It’s what we do. But I realized not everyone understands that.

The cousins probably expected the interviews and follow-up calls. They couldn’t have expected the late-night math exercise to figure out which sister had purchased the card in 1941.

Mettille was pretty sure it was her mom, Bobbie Snider. Judy thought it might have been hers, Jean Coppins. I needed to know.

With the cousins’ help, I drew a grid, one for each year, filling in names of the sender for the years we were sure who sent it. Coppins in 2012 when Snider was in a memory care home. Snider in 2011 when she wrote, “This is going to fall apart one of these years!”

From that, we determined it had been sent that first time by Snider.

The name of the area where the sisters lived had changed a dozen times over the years. But I found a history that detailed the changes as it grew from village to township to city. It’s Eastpointe now, but in 1941, it was East Detroit.

They’re the kind of details a reader may not notice. Still, we want them to be right. (My editor asked if the sisters’ dad’s chair was definitely a La-Z-Boy, as the cousins recalled, or if I should just use recliner instead.)

It’s why we bristle when people say the media is careless or, worse, fake news.

And why the flowers were a lovely acknowledgment of that work.