Just Hanging - And meeting Ralph Lambert
"In the Fall of that year, it was 1987, in about August there were going to be a group of young single adults from Mesa going over to Catalina Island for the Labor Day weekend. There were people – young single adults that would put together these adventures for lots of people to do. Joany Climon was one of them and she would put together different adventures.
"My roommates were saying, “Oh, Lets go do this because we can meet guys.” And I really didn’t know if I wanted to – I wanted to get Symphony tickets I thought that would be really cool because they had a Symphony there in Phoenix and I was missing music but I decided I would go with them on this adventure instead.
"I wasn’t as interested in meeting guys, but I thought it would be kind of fun to just hang out with them and so Kathryn, Suzanne and I left on the Thursday night and we got on a bus and we traveled over to Long Beach on a bus through the night, actually it was a charter bus and we arrived at the Pier there at Long Beach to catch the Catalina Ferry that morning over to Catalina Island which is off the coast of Southern California. Now unbeknownst to me Kevin Lambert who I had met several months previously – knew who he was, hadn’t dated him or anything, just knew who he was as an acquaintance – his brother Ralph had been working in Long Beach for awhile, he was stationed in the Bay Area, but he’d been working at a site there in Long Beach. He’d called his brother Kevin and had said, “Hey can I come visit you for the Labor Day weekend?” and Kevin said, “I’m not going to actually be here, where are you at?” and he said, “ Long Beach”. “Hey why don’t you come with us, on this young single adult activity over to Catalina Island?” And Ralph said, “ Sure”.
"So that morning as we were getting onto the boat, Kevin Lambert introduced Suzanne, Kathryn and I to his brother Ralph. So Ralph and I are hanging out and we’re going over to Catalina Island which is 26 miles and took about an hour on the boat. My sister was having problems with motion sickness, a lot of people were on top of the boat, but she was down a level lying on a bench right by the trash can. So me being the nice loyal sister that I am, I’m down there with her and Ralph came down with me so we could chat. We visited and we talked and come to find out he was a geologist, and he had his master’s degree from BYU and he was working in the Bay Area. He started out working for Chevron for several years and had been working for several years in the Bay area. He was working out now in the environmental industry for a company named EcologyEnviroment and he would do some traveling about working at different sites, working with different contaminations in the soil.
"And he told me a little about himself and he’s the youngest of seven children, he grew up in Southern California and Utah and California. So I got to know him a little bit. Well we got over to the Island, we got our stuff and we took it over to the hotel where we would be staying, got moved in, and then Kevin and Ralph came up and wanted to find out if we wanted to go rent a little golf cart to go for a little tour around the island.
"Now on Catalina Island you – they don’t have cars you can drive there, they have these little go-carts that everybody drives around, – they control what they can of environment they have on the island. So they only way you can get around is the carts, they have bikes, a lot of bikes there, they have these little golf carts you can drive around.
"We got one and took a little tour around the city of Avalon which is the city there, and just had a great time laughing and giggling and just had a good time. Some of the other things we did there for the next few days were we went to see a flying fish ride on a boat, we went para-sailing, I did that and it was kind of fun, we went to a dance one night, we rented some tandem bicycles, it hadn’t been planned this way, it just the way it worked out. It like you know, Ralph and I just doing a lot of hanging out together. We’d go to the dance at night and he’d say what are you going to do for dinner, where are you going now.
"A bunch of us rented a boat and went swimming in this area and just had a really good time and it was kind of funny because Suzanne and Kathryn had come on clearly with the intent of meeting boys and I was the one who kind of met a guy. By the time we left on Monday morning to drive back over to the Phoenix area, you know it wasn’t like it was love at first sight or anything, but definitely thought he was a nice guy, he was easy to talk to and be with. I think he felt the same way about me, but I kind of felt like it was long-distance, kind of hard. By this time I was 27, he was 31 and we’ll see. So we said goodbye, it wasn’t any great loss or whatever, we’ll see what happens.
A couple of days later – My sister and I were taking a conditioning class over at Mesa Community College after work. We’d drive into work, come home and go over to this class we were just working out – we came home, we would park back behind the townhouse then we would walk in – and as we were coming through the gated area through the patio, we could see our sliding glass doors into the kitchen dining area. We could see there was our phone right there on the counter and Kathryn was talking to somebody on the phone. As she opened the sliding glass door she looked at the roof with a smile on her face, and said, “It’s him!” and my sister screamed and it was Ralph calling to say Hi and to visit. It soon started that we were calling each other a couple of times a week and he invited me to come up to the Bay Area to come see him.
"My roommates were saying, “Oh, Lets go do this because we can meet guys.” And I really didn’t know if I wanted to – I wanted to get Symphony tickets I thought that would be really cool because they had a Symphony there in Phoenix and I was missing music but I decided I would go with them on this adventure instead.
"I wasn’t as interested in meeting guys, but I thought it would be kind of fun to just hang out with them and so Kathryn, Suzanne and I left on the Thursday night and we got on a bus and we traveled over to Long Beach on a bus through the night, actually it was a charter bus and we arrived at the Pier there at Long Beach to catch the Catalina Ferry that morning over to Catalina Island which is off the coast of Southern California. Now unbeknownst to me Kevin Lambert who I had met several months previously – knew who he was, hadn’t dated him or anything, just knew who he was as an acquaintance – his brother Ralph had been working in Long Beach for awhile, he was stationed in the Bay Area, but he’d been working at a site there in Long Beach. He’d called his brother Kevin and had said, “Hey can I come visit you for the Labor Day weekend?” and Kevin said, “I’m not going to actually be here, where are you at?” and he said, “ Long Beach”. “Hey why don’t you come with us, on this young single adult activity over to Catalina Island?” And Ralph said, “ Sure”.
"So that morning as we were getting onto the boat, Kevin Lambert introduced Suzanne, Kathryn and I to his brother Ralph. So Ralph and I are hanging out and we’re going over to Catalina Island which is 26 miles and took about an hour on the boat. My sister was having problems with motion sickness, a lot of people were on top of the boat, but she was down a level lying on a bench right by the trash can. So me being the nice loyal sister that I am, I’m down there with her and Ralph came down with me so we could chat. We visited and we talked and come to find out he was a geologist, and he had his master’s degree from BYU and he was working in the Bay Area. He started out working for Chevron for several years and had been working for several years in the Bay area. He was working out now in the environmental industry for a company named EcologyEnviroment and he would do some traveling about working at different sites, working with different contaminations in the soil.
"And he told me a little about himself and he’s the youngest of seven children, he grew up in Southern California and Utah and California. So I got to know him a little bit. Well we got over to the Island, we got our stuff and we took it over to the hotel where we would be staying, got moved in, and then Kevin and Ralph came up and wanted to find out if we wanted to go rent a little golf cart to go for a little tour around the island.
"Now on Catalina Island you – they don’t have cars you can drive there, they have these little go-carts that everybody drives around, – they control what they can of environment they have on the island. So they only way you can get around is the carts, they have bikes, a lot of bikes there, they have these little golf carts you can drive around.
"We got one and took a little tour around the city of Avalon which is the city there, and just had a great time laughing and giggling and just had a good time. Some of the other things we did there for the next few days were we went to see a flying fish ride on a boat, we went para-sailing, I did that and it was kind of fun, we went to a dance one night, we rented some tandem bicycles, it hadn’t been planned this way, it just the way it worked out. It like you know, Ralph and I just doing a lot of hanging out together. We’d go to the dance at night and he’d say what are you going to do for dinner, where are you going now.
"A bunch of us rented a boat and went swimming in this area and just had a really good time and it was kind of funny because Suzanne and Kathryn had come on clearly with the intent of meeting boys and I was the one who kind of met a guy. By the time we left on Monday morning to drive back over to the Phoenix area, you know it wasn’t like it was love at first sight or anything, but definitely thought he was a nice guy, he was easy to talk to and be with. I think he felt the same way about me, but I kind of felt like it was long-distance, kind of hard. By this time I was 27, he was 31 and we’ll see. So we said goodbye, it wasn’t any great loss or whatever, we’ll see what happens.
A couple of days later – My sister and I were taking a conditioning class over at Mesa Community College after work. We’d drive into work, come home and go over to this class we were just working out – we came home, we would park back behind the townhouse then we would walk in – and as we were coming through the gated area through the patio, we could see our sliding glass doors into the kitchen dining area. We could see there was our phone right there on the counter and Kathryn was talking to somebody on the phone. As she opened the sliding glass door she looked at the roof with a smile on her face, and said, “It’s him!” and my sister screamed and it was Ralph calling to say Hi and to visit. It soon started that we were calling each other a couple of times a week and he invited me to come up to the Bay Area to come see him.
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