Reconnecting 70 Years Later
Inside Bridgepointe at Ashgrove Woods, a senior living community, days can be fairly routine. For example, Donald Moore and Bobby Gene Combs eat meals together at the same table every day, three times a day.
In late 2023, Combs found himself alone at the table after his wife of 67 years died. A few months later, Moore, also a widower, moved to Bridgepointe.
“He came and he took my seat,” Combs joked, “and I said, ‘I’ve sat there for over a year. They told me that was going to be my seat.’ And he looked around and said, ‘Well, I like it and I think I’m going to make it my seat,’ and he still sits there.”
Moore laughed, saying he liked it better than the other seats at the table.
Despite that awkward start, the two hit it off right away. It was as if they already knew each other. Over many dinner conversations, they discovered they both had been drafted into the U.S. Army in 1953. They had trained to go to Korea, but the armistice was signed just before they had to go into combat. So, both were assigned to Greenham Commons, an air force base in southern England.
“We knew we had been there at the same time, and we couldn’t figure out why we’d never met,” Combs said.
Just before Veteran’s Day 2024, the staff at Bridgepointe’s Adult Day Care Center, which is next door to the independent living facility, asked Combs to get some of his photos together for a display.
“So I went back and pulled out all the pictures I had and started going through them, and I kept coming back to one that showed three people in it. But I didn’t recognize any of them but me, so I just brushed it aside,” Combs said.
But after going through his stack of photos several times, he flipped that picture over and saw the subjects were identified. He had written that the man in the middle was “Donald Moore of Kentucky.”
“And I couldn’t believe it.”
Surely, he thought, that wasn’t the same guy he eats meals with every day.
“So I pitched it down on the table in front of him and said I needed some help identifying some people. Without bending over, he said, “The one in the middle is me.” After he looked at it awhile, I finally I told him, “Well, the one standing beside you is me!”
“I was kind of surprised that it was still around after 70 years,” Moore said. He doesn’t have any pictures of his time in the military.
Both men, who are now in their 90s, marvel that they crossed paths when they were barely 20 years old, nearly 4,000 miles from their Kentucky home.
They’ve learned a lot about each other and have developed a tighter bond due to that photo of a chance meeting neither of them can remember. The inscription on the back of the photo says the third man in the picture was from New Jersey. Again, the two have no recollection of why they were together on that day.
Combs grew up in Garrard County. Moore was from Covington. Both of them married after they returned home from the Army, and each had one son and one daughter.
The moral of their story is simple. When you take in the big picture, it can sometimes be a small world.
Learn more from the Fox56 Story Here A picture connects KY veterans to a chance meeting 70 years ago
