Pen Pals Since 1961 Finally Meet

Two women who have been pen pals for 50 years were overjoyed to meet for the first time in an Arizona hotel. Anne Libby of Connecticut and Louise Pelissier of Scottsdale, Arizona, became pen pals in 1961 when Pelissier, then a fifth-grader in Santa Rosa, California, sent a letter addressed to “Any Elementary School” in Bangor, Maine. It found its way to Libby. The women remained pen pals for many years and reignited their long-distance friendship a few years ago when they both were diagnosed with breast cancer and both of their mothers fell ill with Alzheimer’s. But the women never met face to face until Libby called Pelissier this month and said she and her husband were passing through Arizona on a cross-country trip. The women met the following day in the lobby of a Scottsdale hotel.