Jim & Diane Hoffsis

She and Wally (high school sweethearts) had their honeymoon in Kentucky. Jim is a mirror image of myself - if you forget the height and weight and hair color and accent and....  I mean he matched me (and to an extent, Mark) in humor (dry, "stirred not shaken") and views.  Though you see Bailey in the photo I too also learned much about real cameras from Rockbiter and converted to the quality of slides.  In fact, he helped me purchase my first SLR in Sigatoka in 1970.  I certainly wouldn't want to place Diane, aka Wallis, somewhere in the background.  She could hold her own in dryness but was much nicer than us and would pull us short when Jim and I might get too carried away in our observations (or insults, according to one's point of view). Had a cross-cultural inciden when they traded houses on term break with Mike Coyle and Ann Cousins: Jim wrote: "I vaguely remember staying at Coyle's. I think we traded places and that simultaneously he was using our Cuvu house. It caused a bit of a stir in our little conservative no-privacy community because his girlfriend, later wife, whose name I can't recall, joined him there. Our neighbors, wanting to be welcoming to our friends, brought over some sweets or something, and quickly perceived that some sort of liaison between unmarried people was going on in our house, and later very gently indicated their disapproveal to us. It was a little bit of a scandal".  They are easily my best friends from the Ooakla group and I have tried to visit them as often as possible: 1975 (FL), 1985 and 1997 (CA) and they made it down to New Zealand once. Jim bought himself a Porsche in 1978. Back in USA in 1972 Wally was working in a fruit processwing factory for $1.60. They moved from Tallahasse to Sacramento where Wally became head librarian. They were "shaken not stirred" during the Oct 1989 earthquake.

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2009 Article