Six Degrees of Separation –
Kevin Bacon Isn’t the Only One…
Two Wake Forest freshmen once again show what a small world we live in. Emily Word, of Austin, TX, and Anna Hight, Dallas, TX, were reunited last August. It’s just that they didn’t know they were being reunited.
When Emily’s parents arrived with her in Winston prior to orientation,
they stayed in a local B&B. Selecting
one of three breakfast sittings, they met a mother/daughter duo, Brenda and Anna
Hight, also staying at the same B&B. Seeing
each other again the next morning, Emily’s mother, Nancy, remarked to Brenda
that she looked familiar. However, despite both being from Texas, an admittedly
large area to experience a chance encounter, neither could make a connection.
Shortly afterwards while driving to WFU, the light came on and Nancy startled her husband by shouting that she was sure she knew where the two of them, actually all four, had met. Nancy waited for Brenda in the vestibule of Wake’s chapel prior to the start of a parents gathering, and when Brenda arrived, Nancy asked her if Anna had been born on January 21 of 1983 at Medical City Hospital (in Dallas). Brenda said no, but that Anna had arrived on the 22nd. Nancy then told Brenda that she was all but certain they had shared the same room after their daughters made their grand appearances.
After returning from WFU to Austin, Nancy dug through family albums until locating an eighteen and one-half year old picture of the four females. Although it’s a stretch to compare Emily and Anna then to how they look today and confirm their first meeting, a like comparison of the moms is certainly not.
Thus, the reunion required that both daughters elect to leave different locations in Texas for the same school in North Carolina, stay in the same B&B in Winston-Salem which only had 4 rooms in it, and select the same breakfast sitting, not to mention that someone had to remember what the other team looked like nearly 19 years ago. And it now appears the reunion will continue as both Anna and Emily have pledged Kappa Delta sorority at WFU. Somehow, it was meant to be.