LONE ELM — When he fell on his driveway late November, David Ensminger knew exactly what he had broken.
“It was the same hip from 39 years ago,” when he was in a horrific car accident that broke multiple bones.
Then, he was 53 years old.
At age 94, recovery is slower. But not in question.
“Someday soon, I’ll be sitting on the front pew at church, and you will be sitting there with me, and he’ll be preaching,” Ensminger said as he pointed to his good friend Merrill Hodgden and this reporter.
“You bet I will,” I replied.
“His will to live will see him through,” affirmed Hodgden, his friend of 40-plus years.
“We’re brothers,” Ensminger said of Hodgden. “Brothers in Christ.”
With Ensminger laid up from his fall, it had been a month since the two men had seen each other.
“Usually, we get together once a day, sometimes more,” Hodgden said.
The two became inseparable when their ailing wives were in the same nursing home.
“They hit it off pretty well, too,” Hodgden said of the women.
“Oh, they loved each other,” Ensminger replied.
Velma Ensminger passed away in 2014; Nora Hodgden in 2017. Both were 79.
At their reunion Monday afternoon, Ensminger broke into tears. Hodgden was at a loss for words. For the next hour they never lost their grip on each other’s hands.
