Broken Promises

Mike Rippey was in London getting ready to board a flight to California last week when his brother called with the news: their mother and father had not survived the Napa Valley wildfires. Charles Rippey, 100, and his 98-year-old wife Sara had met in Wisconsin when they were both in grade school. They attended the University of Wisconsin together and were married in 1942. The only time they were apart for long was during World War II when Charles served as a US Army engineer.  They celebrated their  seventy-fifth anniversary last year. Sara had suffered a stroke, so like many of the other victims, the Rippeys may have simply been unable to evacuate in time. “My father wouldn’t have left her,” Mike said. “We knew there's no way either of them would ever be happy, whoever was the last one. So they went together, and that's the way it worked.”