After more than 50 years, old friends still stick together
Friends from Victoria have stuck together through thick, thin
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On friendship
"Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit." - Aristotle, Greek philosopher
"The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you." - Elbert Hubbard, American writer, publisher
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On friendship
"Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit." - Aristotle, Greek philosopher
"The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you." - Elbert Hubbard, American writer, publisher
"Friendship improves happiness and abates misery by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief." - Cicero, Roman statesman, philosopher
"It is the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter." - Marlene Dietrich, German actress, singer
They meet on the second Tuesday of each month, gathering around a table at IHOP and placing a small figurine on the table in front of the fourth vacant spot.
The figurine shows three silver-haired women, trouble-making grins on their faces and the words, "What happens with the girls, stays with the girls" at the base.
Jeanette Turek, Dolores Downs and Shirley Smiga have been friends for more than 50 years. They know each other's secrets and they've seen each other at their best and worst.
"We all know so much about each other, I'm not sure we wouldn't resort to blackmail if we didn't know each other," Turek said, with a mischievous glance at her friends.
So they meet to keep the blackmail at bay, and to laugh and talk about old times, new times and good times. They also talk about their friend Peggy Valis, laughing warmly over memories of Valis, who died three years ago.
The friends met in 1959 after getting jobs at the Bank and Trust in Victoria. They were all new to the bank, fresh out of high school with a smattering of business classes, single, fun-loving and giddy with the first taste of grown-up life.
The quartet congregated together at office parties, laughing as they decorated Christmas trees and pursued good times.
Valis and Turek were roommates. The Halloween party they threw, complete with an apple bob and a scavenger hunt that took guests all over Victoria, was legendary.
"We were crazy," Downs said, laughing.
Eventually, their antics gave way to marriage and children. Downs, Turek and Valis all settled down and began having children. Smiga, the free spirit of the group, got a new job and hopped a plane to Hawaii.
When Downs' first husband died, it was her friends who got her through it. They helped her cope and showed up smiling at the door to baby-sit for the night when she started dating her second husband.
Turek and Valis lived next door to each other and raised their children together, the closest pair in the group.
Still, the women might have grown apart, but Valis took her friendships seriously, they all agreed. She kept track of her friends, sending Christmas cards, making phone calls and arranging dinners, play-dates and parties.
"She was the instigator and the glue that held us together," Turek said.
A birthday or a Christmas never went by without a card from Valis arriving in Smiga's Honolulu mailbox, Smiga said. Valis made regular calls checking in on her friend, and made sure to keep the others informed. Even thousands of miles away, she ensured that Smiga was still knitted into the fabric of the group.
When Smiga moved back to Victoria after retiring, Valis immediately pulled her back in.
That was eight years ago. All four had their own social groups in the town, but they took the time to come to card parties and lunches and dinners together.
Then Valis was diagnosed with colon cancer. Her friends rallied around her, checking in every day and bringing food by the house - the things friends do in times of trouble. When she began losing her hair, Smiga helped her choose a wig. When she went to the hospital for the last time, Turek was there at her bedside, laughing and scolding her at the same time.
"I told her she needed to just get better. We were supposed to be old ladies on the porch together at the nursing home, so she just needed to get better," Turek said.
When Valis died three years ago, the person who had kept their group together all of these years was gone, but the three remaining friends decided to keep the friendship alive. They started meeting for a monthly breakfast about six months ago to ensure they'd see each other at least once a month.
"It's what Peggy would want," Turek said.
There's a comfort in old friends that can't be found anywhere else, Turek noted as Downs and Smiga nodded in agreement.
"It's very special because you have people you can count on. We tell each other about our husbands, our families, our friends, our daily experiences," Downs said. "We tell each other things that we don't want anyone else to know about. We keep secrets for other people, but we tell each other everything about ourselves."
"Old friends, those are the best," Smiga said.
Turek agreed.
"I don't think young people today work hard enough to stay friends. Everyone is so wrapped in their own lives, but someday you'll get old and that's when you'll need friends, the people who know you, who knew you when you were young," Turek said.
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