Heading South Toward California

We discovered in Oregon that the train heading down to Redding, Cal. did not have any luggage facility in that small station so it would be impossible for us to carry all our bags. That led to the decision to get another rental car and drive down. The least expensive per-day plan was to drop it off in San Jose, Cal. Mysteriously, to drop it in San Francisco cost almost twice as much. That meant that we'd be driving from Salem, Oregon to San Jose. Because of that little divine intervention we were able to stop in Eugene, Oregon to meet Jay Sayer, the person who deepened Julie in the Faith more than 40 years ago in LA.

I've been hearing from Julie about Jay and Connie Sayer for years. She was working as a model in the clothing industry when she became a Baha'i and the Sayers lived near her home, so she used to hang out at their house whenever she was free. She hasn't seen them in all these years but found out they were living in Eugene from another friend we met in Amherst, Carol Rutstein. (We found out later from Jay that the lovely Baha'i we stayed with in Swartz Bay, Carolyn Ornatz, had learned about the faith from the Sayers when they lived in Australia. This world is verrrry small, no?)

We made a surprise call to Jay on our way down to Eugene and he immediately recognized Julie's voice. As it turns out, Connie has the start of Alzheimer's disease now and apparently didn't want her dear friend, Julie, to see her in that state, so we ended up meeting Jay nearby for coffee.

I was delighted to meet him at last, and overheard a conversation between the two for a couple of hours. I heard all about mutual friends and old times, but most importantly heard later from Julie that she felt that she had been able to touch his heart in some needy areas (before, it was the other way around).
Jay is a veteran from the entertainment industry, a communications expert, and Connie a light opera singer. I'm a bit sad that I didn't get to meet her, but he showed us some wonderful old photos of the two when they were in their heyday.