GREELEY, Colo. (AP) - Deb Montanaro never forgot Nelson Kenyon, even when she built a life with her husband.
That didn’t mean she was unhappy. They had three children together, and those children gave her 13 grandkids. She left her beloved New York just a couple years ago to be close to her kids, in fact, a move that she admits was traumatic. Her daughter lives down the street from her in her east-Greeley neighborhood. The other two are just a short plane ride away.
But Kenyon was her first love, and those first loves are hard for anyone to forget. She was 15, and he was 18, with a car. Her grandfather was chief of police. Whenever they saw each other, it didn’t take long for police cars to roll by the house.
“It just wasn’t gonna happen,” Montanaro said and laughed.
When a girlfriend back east called her to say she found him, Montanaro hopped on Facebook. She’d already looked for him, she admitted with a grin. But Kenyon wasn’t prominent on there. He’s lucky when he remembers to turn on his computer, Montanaro said. But Montanaro didn’t know that at the time, and so when she sent him a message and didn’t hear back from him, she figured it was another missed chance.
She was 62, and that made him 65, probably far too late to be thinking about rekindling a fire that had long cooled into embers. Only she did hear from him almost four months after she wrote him in early 2012. He apologized and blamed it not only on his computer skills but the fact that he didn’t recognize her married name or her face. It had been a while.
Montanaro’s husband died five years ago, and he had a partner pass away. They were both available. They exchanged phone numbers.
“We’ve talked at least once a day since,” Montanaro said.
Indeed, those first few phone calls were cautious, but they were also goosed by memories. They remembered old hangouts, old friends and, after a bit, that old spark.
Her mother, Phyllis, who shares the house with Montanaro, wondered what the heck they could talk about for hours on the phone every day.
“I told her, ’Mom, it’s been 45 years,’” Montanaro said and laughed. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
Montanaro may have been a fan of the Internet for life just based on that one incident alone. But recently she got another surprise: She found a long-lost brother.
Her mother gave up a baby long ago for private reasons, something neither one want to get into here. When his parents died five years ago, he began looking for his birth family. He came across a DeFrank (Montanaro’s maiden name) on a genealogy website. After she talked to that relative, Montanaro found him on Facebook and sent him a message asking him if he was looking for his family. He asked if she was a DeFrank. She said yes.
“OMG,” he wrote back. “I can’t believe I found you!”
He came out to visit with Montanaro and her brother the weekend of Feb. 1. The whole weekend was beautiful. Wade was happy to see everyone, and he seemed to fit, like, well, an old family member. They found a familiar nose here and the same laugh there. In fact, the only tension came from watching the Super Bowl together. He was a Seahawks fan.
“He was pretty nice about it actually,” Montanaro said. “He kept quiet.”
Wade referred to them as his “new family” on Facebook, and Montanaro believes everyone will stay in touch as much as family members will allow.
Montanaro does more than stay in touch with her new boyfriend, who is a lot like the first boyfriend she ever had. They now see each other every six weeks. He lives in California, but he has plans to move out to Greeley.
He hopes that’s by September, when his job may allow that. But for now, the two will visit over the phone.
They still talk on the phone a lot. That’s how they used to do it in the days before Facebook.
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Information from: The Tribune of Greeley, Co, https://greeleytribune.com
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