Life is full of coincidences; we probably experience many more than we are ever aware of. Sunday, the obituary of a distinguished dentist, president of the American Academy of Restorative Dentistry among many other honors, was published in the Kalamazoo Gazette.
To my knowledge, I never talked to him (Harold Ward Fountain) when he was in my town driving a red convertible and looking to me like a movie star while he was courting his wife, Glenna; they married in 1943. Her parents lived at the time where their lot backed up to our lot.
I later noticed he was a dentist in Kalamazoo where no contact was made during the 33 years we both were here. He retired in 1983 and they then moved to Arizona. Perhaps I saw him when he was a teenager in his home town of Remus when my father took me with him when he was delivering butter wrappers to the Remus Creamery.
After marriage he entered the Navy as a dentist until discharged in 1946. The Navy called him back in 1950 and loaned him to the Army. He was sent to Germany and provided dental service to the U.S. soldiers and their dependents. When they had free time they toured postwar Europe. It is kind of dumb to think about the possibility of meeting them by chance there when I was visiting similar places in 1952.
Perhaps I think about such things because I have had chance encounters with people I knew from elsewhere. Two buddies stationed with me in Munich were on a three day pass in Paris. I had taken an earlier leave and had made a circuit around northern Europe ending up in Paris on my way back to Munich. I was leaving a show late at night and heard "Joe" from them seated at a street cafe on a nearby street. We spent the rest of the evening wandering the streets of Paris.
I met an older couple on the train from Chicago to San Francisco in 1956. Then they were on the same cruise ship from San Francisco to Sydney. A younger lady on the same ship that was part of a social group that developed on the trip was in the crowd several months later moving in the opposite direction around the Olympic stadium in Melbourne.
The following year on the trip across the Indian Ocean one of the travelers I met stayed with the ship all the way to England. I had gotten off in Marseille to do some sightseeing on my way to catch a different ship from Southampton to New York; in London we happened to notice each other in Trafalgar Square.
What is the chance?
How do we zero in on those we know in such circumstances. I came from a home town of about 4,000 people. The ones I saw in my neighborhood were almost always people I knew. You expect to recognize and greet people in such places, the habit of scanning crowds for familiar faces is probably not unusual. It is probably not unusual in the animal world; consider the penguins returning to a large number of seemingly identical penguins and easily finding their mates.
I think it was in 1952 when I was visiting the London Zoo and was outside the lion exhibit. A small group of people were watching a large lion resting in seeming boredom not far from the fence. All of a sudden his head perked up and he alertly looked toward people farther away on the walk. He may have had an early warning from clicking heels of a young well-dressed young lady approaching. She stopped in front of him and they looked at each other, perhaps sharing more communication than I was aware of. I suspected she had a role helping him through his early development.
I wasn't planned, the meeting in Trafalgar Square. I was crossing to go to a museum, she was killing some time waiting for her train home. But there are probably many possible coincidences that do not occur because the time of travel intersecting does not match; a minute could make the difference. And today you might be too busy with your cell phone. Will you see a friend in the picture you are taking when you get home?
Joe Engemann Kalamazoo, Michigan February 20, 2017
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