October Neighbor of the month                                               

                                                             by

                                                        brian a. hartford  

    This month your reporter is making amends for an overlook. In the March issue of our little tabloid, before taking my present assignment, my short biography was included as the Neighbor of the Month. My ego was apparently going in overtime because I only slightly mentioned I was married to a lovely lady-Dorothea Hartford. I now shall make amends for this oversight.

    It is only fitting I should mention Dora. Not only for continued harmony in our household, but she is a very interesting person and good neighbor herself. Moving here four and a half years ago we were actually separated on a weekly basis by Dora’s continued working in Columbia, Maryland. She only was a weekend visitor until 2007 when she was allowed to work from home over the internet. Actually, Dora had really decided on Milford for future retirement, “Because it was right in the middle of the State of Delaware, Brian loves the beach,  and Florida is  too darn hot!”

    Dora and I had met shortly after I had become a widower and had simultaneously recovered from a life-saving heart transplant in 1990.  A mutual friend introduced us at the local pub in Columbia.  In our first conversation I told her of my former wife’s untimely death at 43 to cancer, raising two devastated teenage step children, and my heart transplant expected mortality (2 years!). I literally was crying in my diet coke (not drinking beer anymore). Not really feeling qualified to be on any desirable “bachelors list” after a heart transplant, I was surprised when she looked at me with her beautiful blue eyes and asked, “So what are you going to do next?” I was flabbergasted at the question. Within three years we were married and now share fourteen grandchildren and two great- grandchildren from ages twenty-eight to four months of age. (We were both married a few times before).

  Dora is a native of Iceland and has lived and raised four children in the United States for over forty years. She worked for Icelandair Airlines for over seventeen years until she was laid off last October. Dora’s airline privileges gave us the opportunity to travel not only to Iceland often, but destinations in the four corners of the world. Although Dora could retire at age sixty-seven, she is still seeking work in the travel-tour business. She loves the Hearthstone Manor life-style and the beach atmosphere. However, if pressed, she will readily admit, “I am really a big city girl and miss the noise!”