It happened just before midnight Wednesday at the Portland International Jetport.

A late-arriving flight had just landed. And as the procession of weary passengers streamed down the escalator to the baggage claim, an elderly couple stood just off to the side hugging and kissing.

“Too much lovin’!” chuckled an African-American woman as she passed by.

Little did she know.

His name is Jim Snodgrass. He’s 79, has lived most of his adult life in Southern California and, until last week, had never laid eyes on Maine.

Her name is Dodie Schmidgall. She’s 70, has spent the last 35 years living in midcoast Maine and last laid eyes on Jim … what was it, 51 years ago?

Theirs is a story about loneliness, about loss and about that modern-day miracle called the Internet.

But mostly it’s a story about hope.

Dodie, whose surname was Nichols before she married Richard Schmidgall way back in 1964, grew up in Granite City, Ill.

Jim, known to his family and friends as “Jimmy” when he was young, grew up 20 miles away in Alton, Ill.

Exactly when and how they met as children will forever be a mystery — their parents and anyone else who might be able to fill in the blanks are all long gone. But there’s one thing Dodie never forgot.

“I remember my mother telling me when I was in my early teens that Jimmy Snodgrass was my ‘first boyfriend,’ ” she recalled. “And that’s all I remember.”

Maybe it was the fact that both families belonged to the Assemblies of God church, although in different districts.

Or maybe it had something to do with a family by the name of Cherry, who were friends with Jimmy’s folks in Alton and had relatives who lived four houses down from Dodie in Granite City.

Whatever it was, one day when Dodie was 18 and working at the First Bank of St. Louis, a handsome, 27-year-old man who worked in the same building walked up to her in the cafeteria and said, “Hi Dodie. I’m Jimmy.”

How did he recognize her?

“I can’t put it together,” Jim replied. “I just did.”

Now don’t get the wrong idea here. At the time, Jim already had a wife named Ruth and a baby daughter. And Dodie was dating someone and would never dream of taking up with a married man.

“In those days, you didn’t do that,” she said.

But they liked each other. They shared the same religion. And for a year or so, they’d meet occasionally for coffee or lunch and just enjoy each other’s company.

“Then she went her direction and I went my direction,” Jim said.

That’s an understatement.

Jim, who became and remains to this day an Assembly of God minister, ended up in Chino, Calif., where he and Ruth spent 56 blissful years raising two daughters and a son.

Dodie, meanwhile, married Richard Schmidgall in Illinois and eventually moved to Maine, where they ran a bed and breakfast in Camden for 18 years while raising three sons.

Then on Christmas Eve in 2009, Rich died of cancer. For the first time in 45 years, Dodie found herself alone in her home in Thomaston and, well, beyond miserable.

“Loneliness is the big factor,” Dodie said, recalling how most of the couples with whom she and Rich socialized quickly vanished. “You’re suddenly the extra wheel. And no matter how close you were before, it’s just like you don’t exist anymore.”

Jim nodded.

“They just drop you like a hot potato,” he said.

Dodie passed the time with crossword puzzles, the numbers game “Sudoku” and, when all else failed, late-night television. She joined a grief support group, hoping to find a way out of her morass.

She even created her own Facebook page in the spring of 2010 — mostly to keep track of her large extended family and a few old friends.

Last October, a continent away, Jim lost Ruth, also to cancer.

He too experienced the sudden loss of a social life. He too found help through griefshare.com, a nationwide network of support groups. And he too logged on to that newfangled phenomenon called Facebook.

On Jan. 29, unable to sleep, Ruth opened her Facebook page and found a private message in her inbox. She took one look at the name — Jim Snodgrass — and gasped, “Oh my!”

“Hi Dodie,” Jim wrote. “Where have all the years gone?”

Jim had instantly recognized Dodie while perusing an old Illinois acquaintance’s list of Facebook friends. And he’d done his homework before contacting her — not only did he know Dodie was recently widowed, he’d also tracked down Rich’s obituary online and thus knew much more about Dodie than she did about him.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Dodie said, laughing. “I thought, ‘What do I do with this?’ “

Two days later, Dodie swallowed her jitters and wrote back.

And so it began.

Every day and deep into many nights, the messages flew from coast to coast. They wrote about their lives over the decades, about the tracts of farmland that each still owns back in Illinois, about coping with finding oneself alone in life’s twilight.

Before long, the Facebook messages led to their first telephone call — Jim wanted to give Dodie some advice about insurance and persuaded her it would be quicker by phone.

Like teenagers, they talked … and talked … and talked. One day, they talked nonstop for seven hours.

“What kind of toothpaste do you use?” asked Jim one night.

“Crest,” replied Dodie.

“I do too!” howled Jim, sending them both into fits of laughter.

“We laughed so much on the phone,” Jim said. “And I hadn’t had a laugh in months.”

“Years,” added Dodie with a knowing nod.

Finally, while visiting a friend in Missouri, Jim decided to take it one step further. While chatting with Dodie online, he asked if maybe, just maybe, he might come to Maine for a visit.

Inevitable as the question was, it scared Dodie half to death.

“I’m sorry,” she hastily typed back. “I really don’t think I’m ready yet for a relationship.”

Jim, feeling more like a lovesick 18-year-old than a man fast approaching 80, stared in disbelief at the screen.

“At that moment,” he said, “the balloon punctured.”

It knocked Dodie off balance, too. Two days later, while looking for birthday cards in a local Hallmark shop, she suddenly burst into tears and had to run out to her car to compose herself.

“I thought, ‘What is wrong with me?’ ” she said.

And?

“All I could think was, ‘I really want him.’ “

Two months ago, a box arrived in Dodie’s mail from the jewelry store her sister and brother-in-law still own and operate in Illinois. Jim had stopped by the shop while visiting his farm — and while Dodie knew perfectly well what was inside, she left the box unopened.

Until last week.

Before leaving California, Jim’s son had offered him a little advice.

“When you first see her, go slow,” his son said. “Just shake hands.”

Peering down the escalator at the woman standing all by herself in the airport concourse (“I was a nervous twit!” said Dodie), Jim remembered his son’s admonition.

“So I shook hands with her,” Jim said. “Then I hugged her and I kissed her.”

Later, Jim took a diamond-studded engagement ring out of that box and formally asked Dodie to marry him — until he did so in person, she’d told him, the ring was staying put.

Then on Thursday, as they stood with two friends and a justice of the peace on picturesque Beauchamp Point overlooking Rockport Harbor, Jim took out a second ring and placed it on Dodie’s finger.

As they kissed again, this time as husband and wife, a half-dozen nearby sunbathers broke into applause.

“We’re so happy,” said Jim, mirroring Dodie’s misty smile. “We are so happy.”

A formal wedding with family and friends will be held in Camden this fall. After that, the newlyweds will spend summers in Maine, winters in California and spring and fall at the farm in Illinois.

Meaning life, at long last, will go on.

Dodie’s grief support group has cheered her on throughout her whirlwind romance — she had to talk them out of showing up for Thursday’s ceremony because she and Jim wanted to keep it low-key and private.

But she owes the group a lot. And so on Wednesday, an eternally grateful Dodie will attend one more weekly meeting.

She wants them to meet the one and only Jimmy Snodgrass. Her “first boyfriend.”

And she wants to tell them goodbye.

Columnist Bill Nemitz can be contacted at 791-6323 or at:

bnemitz@mainetoday.com

 

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