Email 15

Welcome to IN THEIR PATH!
Date: Wednesday May 13, 2003

Days into the walk: 3
I walked 7 miles. I have not met my ten mile a day goal yet. I gave a good try today,

Weather this week: Today it is sunny! Wow, what a welcome sight. It is dry and feels so good.

Travel plans & whats in the works: So I am having way too much fun to worry about falling behind in my walk. I have a few days leeway over the Memorial Day weekend to make up the miles of my slow beginning.

What I learned about the Underground Railroad:
However Id gone only two miles when I met a woman pushing her two year old grandson in a stroller. And she recognized me from the morning Erie times article by Tara May and took me to her friends, the Deiners who lived half a block away in the oldest stone house in the county right on route 5. A HOUSE WITH UGRR CONNECTION., included in Lisa Gensheimers documentary Safe Harbor www.wqln.org/safeharbor Soon to be seen on Cleveland PBS TV.

Mr. and Mrs. Diener could not have been more welcoming. Their home is beautifully restored the walls 18 inch thick lake stone. I went into the basement to view the walled over freedom seekers hiding space (pictures will be on the web soon).

Then I made cell phone connection to Lisa (Id talked to her when I was in Edinboro last fall but had never met her) and she came to pick me up and we both went back to visit with the Deiners and meet my RV friends, Elaine and Homer Solomon, so they could see the house too. Lisa took us on a tour showing the many creeks that ran to the lake and afforded safer escape way than the harbor and other building remnants (see pictures on web site) and as we were viewing the red brick Bolan home from the front lawn, Mr. Bolan, drove up and invited us in to see yet another beauty of restoration, and the secret trap door and cramped hiding place on the second floor of his home.

This whole day was magical: One unplanned Underground Railroad connection after the other. Then we ended the day with a planned visit to the John Brown tannery and Museum in Crawford County where Donna Coburn told story after delightful story of how here father in law bought the property and how she has worked within and through a personal grief to clear land and build a successful space honoring John Brown. Same time different place but always IN THEIR PATH!