True Love Stories: Best friends forever

Let me start by telling you about Wayne - my lover, my husband and my best friend.

Wayne and I lived in an eight-plex war housing apartment in Richmond, Calif., in the early 1940s. He was 4 and I was 3. There were a lot of children, but he and I were best playmates. Our parents were also good friends. His mother used to let us help her do dishes, with Wayne or me standing on a chair washing them, and the other drying.

The City of Richmond mowed the grass weekly, and left big piles of grass to be picked up later. We had more fun playing in those big piles of grass.

Wayne's parents built a home and they moved away when he was six. My parents bought a home the following year about two miles down the street from them, but we didn't meet again until I was 12 and he was 13. He walked or rode his bike down to my house and we would sit and talk or take walks.

When I was 13, he asked me to go steady. I naturally said, "Yes." His father or mine would take us to the movie theater or roller skating, and pick us up. We went to different schools, but he always met me in the morning and would walk me to school and then catch the public bus to get to his school.

He asked me to marry him when I was a senior. We were married in 1960. We have three children, three grandchildren and one great-grandchild. We will be celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary this June. We are the perfect match.

Judy Manning

Minden