Google Is A Man's Best Friend

For the time being we were waiting for the red tape. So, in my evenings I started Googling the original owners/ builders of the house. The name on the plans was Mrs. (Her Husband's Name). That is the first thing I Googled. I surprisingly found several archived newspaper articles from the 60's. I found one article with a photo of some ladies from the local synagogue and one of them was the owner of the house. I finally got to see a picture of her. She was a very pretty lady. I also saw an article about a book club she conducted at the house. It gave the address of the house which used to be a rural route number! It was rural route number four. It now has a regular street name. Despite finding all of this interesting information I still did not know this lady's name and for some reason I was very curious. There had to be more to this lady than being Mrs. (Her Husband's Name). I continued Googling over several evenings. I then started Googling the husband's name. I found out through archived newspaper articles that he had been president of our town's chamber of commerce and involved in other community activities. I eventually came across the man's obituary. That was the key! He still lived in our state. He had been a very successful accountant and I knew for a fact that it was the right person because it mentioned that he had worked in our town. Thankfully the family names are not extremely common ones which made everything much easier. The obituary listed the wife's name. (She was still alive when he passed away five years ago.) And, the names of his two living children. Another jackpot!!! I started Googling the names of the children and our hometown together. They still lived in our town as high school students and I found several archived newspaper articles about their school achievements. I knew what the mother looked like and by this point I was anxious to know what the children looked like. Our high school senior yearbook pictures are online so I went and looked the kids up. (I was able to figure out their graduation years based on the ages given in the newspaper articles.) I found the girl and noticed she resembled her mother. I could not find a senior picture for the boy. I continued to Google in an attempt to figure out where they are today. I discovered the are both living on the other end of the state and the boy who is now in his 50's has been back to our town very recently. There was actually a newspaper article where he was interviewed at a local jazz festival. I knew it was him because it talked about the fact he used to live here and where he lives now. I even came across a website where he RSVP'd that he would be attending his high school reunion here in less than a month! At this point I was feeling like a full fledged stalker but I couldn't stop now! If the man had happy enough memories in our town to return several times 30 or more years after leaving then surely if I tried to contact him I would not be dragging up old painful memories. I found him on Facebook and I found him on Linked In. I knew that if I invited him to be my friend on Facebook he would have no clue who I was and not be inclined to accept. Now Facebook seems to want you to pay them $1 to message someone who is not your friend without it going in their "other" box. I stooped to a new low and paid them the $1. The low being that I gave them my credit card number. Blech! I also attempted to get in touch through Linked In but I don't know how many people use that site regularly. I waited a week or two but got no reply. I was starting to think maybe I wouldn't be able to find a way to make contact. I kept Googling trying to find an email address. The man is a lawyer but his firm's website was not working. Somewhere I finally came across an AOL address. I didn't have much hope. Does anyone use AOL anymore!? Apparently some people do. I got a reply back quite quickly!!