“When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
— Billy Crystal, “When Harry Met Sally”
To consider Joe and Sarah Kennedy’s whirlwind courtship is to realize the twists and turns — some big, some little — that set their path.
They probably never should have met, never should have gone on their first date in early March, and certainly never should have been married five weeks later.
But love, and perhaps some divine intervention, work in mysterious ways.
SARAH AND JOE, both 47, were married in a quiet ceremony April 24 at Joe’s home in Derby in front of a dozen family and friends.
Up until then, Sarah lived in Iola, working as a floor manager at Waters Hardware — where the couple met.
Joe is the construction manager for Vogst Construction, the company in charge of building the new visitors center at Lehigh Portland State Park on the south edge of Iola.
They’ll move full-time back to Derby when the visitors center is complete this summer.
Sarah already has informed her bosses she is leaving a job — and a community — she’s grown to love.
“Iola has been very, very good to me,” she said. “You know how they say it takes a village to raise a kid and all that kind of stuff, but if Iola hadn’t been so good to me, I never would have made it here.”
SARAH probably never should have been in Kansas to begin with.
“Let’s just say I’ve made a lot of wrong turns in my life,” she said.
She grew up in southern Illinois and was raised by her grandmother, after both she and her sister were left by their parents.
Their father was an alcoholic; their mother also abused drugs.
Sure enough, Sarah followed their footsteps.
