by Guy Page

It wasn’t planned this way. But a young couple living in Waterville experienced the birth of their newborn baby girl while under cover of the town’s Codding Hollow bridge, also known as “The Kissing Bridge.”

You can read all about it in the June 9 News & Citizen Waterville community news column written every week for decades by Susan Davis, the daughter-in-law of Waterville Garage owner-operator Ken Davis and longtime Town Clerk Emma (Manchester) Davis and therefore related by marriage to a family that has played a prominent role in Waterville life for many generations.

The same can be said of course for the Locke family, many generations of whom have lived in Waterville – a town of 686 souls (down from 697 in 2000) located on Rte. 109 just north of Jeffersonville and south of Belvidere. The story told by Davis concerns the arrival of the youngest representative of the large, local Locke clan.

“We had some exciting news in Waterville on May 28. Jesse Locke was taking Rebecca Abair to the hospital to have their first baby when the baby decided to arrive early. The baby, a little girl, was born inside the kissing bridge, a covered bridge in Waterville, as they were passing through.

“Rebecca held the baby as they continued onto the hospital where the cord was cut. The baby weighed eight pounds, nine ounces. Both the baby and the other are doing fine.”

* * * * * *

People who once called Waterville home (our family has had a summer home there since the 1930’s, and I lived there in the early 1980’s) depend on Sue Davis to keep us up on the local news. So it was with concern and shock that I read further in her column that Sue’s husband Steve would miss his 58th Cambridge High School reunion because in the early morning hours after Memorial Day he began suffering neurological symptoms – “his mind was not working right” – and was taken by ambulance to Copley Hospital.

“They couldn’t find out what was wrong. He came home and was out of it all day Tuesday,” Sue reported. “I finally took him down to the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.”

“How quickly things can change,” Sue wrote – which is about as mournful as this cheerful woman of faith, family and community ever gets in her column, and (in my interactions with her) in real life, too.

In the latest, June 16 issue, Sue writes, “Steve has good days, followed by some bad days. Hopefully they figure out what is wrong soon.” She also reports that she was nominated at Town Meeting last week to continue serving as a trustee, but she turned it down. “Steve needs my attention right now, and when he comes home, he’ll need 24/7 care. There will be no time to volunteer at the library.”

I’m looking forward to getting this week’s issue in the mail. Meanwhile, blessings on the little Locke girl and her family, and on Sue, Steve and theirs; on those needing care, and those giving it in love.