“Make new friends, but keep the old!
One is silver and the other gold.“

This couplet is a from poem by the Welsh poet, Joseph Parry (1841-1903). Now best known as a round, it made its first appearance in the 1925   Girl Scout Song Book . This link is to a YouTube version where you can hear a present-day performance of it.*

There was a jolly clamor for this 4th of July weekend celebration.Three families, three eighty-year-olds and three sixty-year-olds are tossing our hats in celebrating a friendship that began more than 65 years before. All these people know each other because two grandfathers both worked at Time, Inc. long ago. One of the grandfathers was in the wedding party when my husband (the other grandfather) and I were married in 1954. Both grandfathers and one grandmother are now gone, but remembered with many great memories and hilarious stories.

Our families always spent Memorial Day weekends and the 4th of July together, adding a third grandfather, known universally as “Uncle Bun-Bun”, along the way. Our children grew up together as cousins, and now the grandchildren  are carrying on the tradition.

I celebrate old friends,the fact that my children (four daughters) are all friends, and even better, that the men in their lives all get along.  This Senior Warrior counts this joy as a major piece of luck – a significant victory, even.

* The song also appeared in an episode of the TV Series, Boardwalk, a very dark, violent series based in Atlantic City during its mob-controlled heyday.