THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 14, 1995 TAG: 9505100068
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 135 lines
LAST SUMMER, Larry Bennet was 43. He was single. He was leading a comfortable, successful life in Nashville, Tenn.
But he was restless, his head full of memories of a high school flame, a girl he first met in Ohio in 1969 and hadn't seen for 20 years.
``I kept thinking about Bonnie. She would keep coming in and out of my mind,'' he recalled. He didn't know if she was married, still cared about him or even wanted to see him again.
A practical person would have let it go at that. But Larry Bennet has never been a practical guy.
So there was only one logical thing to do.
Quit his job, sell his assets and move back in with his parents. He needed time, money and flexibility if he was going to find his old sweetheart.
His search took nine months and led him on a paper trail through Ohio, Texas and eventually Virginia Beach. This past March he found Bonnie Ferguson. After scores of hours-long phone calls, flower bouquets and a four-day visit that stretched into a week, Larry packed up again and moved here to live with Bonnie. She's 41 now and a self-employed massage therapist.
``We are soulmates,'' he said firmly, taking a long look at the smiling, dark-haired woman sitting beside him.
The years they weren't together are strange, they say. They know they've been apart, but can't tell.
During two decades they were out of touch they were both married and divorced several times. Bonnie had three children, changed jobs every few years, eventually learning massage therapy. She brought her children to Virginia Beach to be closer to family, who'd moved here from Ohio. Larry had several job changes in retail and moved from D.C. to Nashville before going home to look for her.
``He has the same hands. He looks the same, he walks the same, he talks the same way,'' Bonnie said.
Bonnie Gore was a high school junior in 1969 in Bay Village, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. Larry was a senior. They dressed like hippies, parted their long hair in the middle and wore bell-bottom pants. They shared the same sense of humor.
``I remember the first time I ever teased her in the hall,'' he said. Something clicked and the couple started a three-year romance. Everyone called them a perfect match. But every summer their courtship fell apart.
``He dumped me every summer to go play with the guys,'' said Bonnie, reaching up to brush a stray hair from Larry's forehead.
Peer pressure, admitted Larry, shaking his head.
Larry was in college and Bonnie was working when Larry drove an aunt to Washington, D.C., in 1972 and decided, on a whim, to stay.
``I decided I had to do my own thing. We were not dating at that point,'' he recalled.
``It was summer,'' Bonnie said, shooting a glance his way.
Three years later, she visited D.C. with friends and surprised Larry by calling. His heart flip-flopped.
``She was just there for the weekend and I called into work and said I wouldn't be there,'' he remembered.
After that, they wrote a few times and then lost touch again. Larry still has those letters from Bonnie. She moved to Texas. He married and divorced twice, thinking often of Bonnie and looking for her whenever he went home to Ohio. Once he even asked a detective how to start a search.
In July last year, while living in Nashville, he called Bonnie's parents, contacted the high school's alumni association, found the real estate agent who sold the last house Bonnie lived in.
``It was haunting by this point, in a good sense. I wouldn't call it necessarily obsessive,'' he said, adding, ``Well, maybe.''
That's when he moved home to Ohio and started a freelance desktop publishing business.
He got advice from another detective, bought a book on searching for missing persons and started checking Ohio records.
``And then, boom. I had it,'' he said.
Bonnie's social security number was on the divorce records. Using it, he traced her to Texas. Last December, he sent a letter to the Social Security Administration asking them to forward a letter from him to Bonnie. She received it in February.
Days before she got it, she dreamed of him.
``I dreamed I was back in Bay Village and ran into Larry and he had a letter in his hand and it said, `Do you remember me fondly?' '' she said, shaking her head.
Just to be safe, in case Bonnie was married, Larry said he was getting in touch to invite her to a college reunion.
She wrote back.
``She wrote, `I live here, I have kids, I do this, I do that,' and I thought, Yesssss, she's not married,'' he said.
On March 5, a Sunday, he called.
``When I realized he might have more in mind than the reunion, my first reaction was, `No - I haven't dated in a year and a half. I'm content. I like my life,' '' she recalled.
Monday, he called back and left a message. Tuesday, he sent roses.
``We talked three hours on the phone that night,'' she said. ``It had been a long, long time. I can't remember when I'd been sent roses. As the phone calls progressed and I found out all the trouble he'd gone through to find me, that was overwhelming.''
She was also overwhelmed by how she still felt about him.
``It was new at the same time it was old. Through the phone calls, it was as if a lifetime had passed and as if no time had passed.''
Friday he sent hyacinths and read her his poetry.
``All the walls were coming down,'' said Bonnie.
Six weeks ago, Larry flew in for a long weekend. Bonnie couldn't eat. Couldn't pick him up at the airport. He drove to Virginia Beach in a rented car. As he stood at the reception desk of his Oceanfront hotel, he looked across the lobby through a window toward the Boardwalk.
``There was a woman, huddled in a coat, sitting on a bench looking at the water. All I could see was the top of her head. It was Bonnie,'' Larry said.
That weekend Larry gave Bonnie an emerald and diamond ring. He made friends with her three children, extended his visit to a week, then went home to Ohio to pack up and move here.
They're living together. There are no wedding plans.
Yet.
``We have a lifetime,'' said Larry. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Bonnie Gore Ferguson in her high school days in Bay Village, Ohio.
She was a junior and he was a senior when they first dated.
Larry Bennet, pictured here in his high school yearbook, dated
Bonnie for three years. ``He dumped me every summer to play with the
guys,'' says Bonnie.
Color photo
TAMARA VONINSKI/Staff
Larry and Bonnie each married and divorced several times during the
years they were out of touch. Days before she got his letter, she
dreamed about him.
by CNB