homefront 26-47_Homefront 2 7/7/20 2:45 PM Page 36
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By Ashley Miller
Thanks to Downhome, this NL couple’s romance was signed, sealed and delivered 20 years ago.
“We love telling our story,” begins Lisa Cakes over the phone from her home in Noggin Cove, NL. “I’m getting emotional just thinking back on it.” With this year marking two decades since Lisa met her husband, Jeremy, they’re reminiscing about the start of their sweet love story, set in motion by Downhome. Then in their early 20s, both Jeremy and Lisa had made letter writing somewhat of a hobby. In April 2000, Lisa responded to Jeremy’s request for a pen pal in “New Friends Across the Miles,” a monthly page in what was then called the Downhomer. “Every time I’d get a letter from him I’d be so excited,” beams Lisa. Her experience receiving and replying to Jeremy’s letters was a little different than you might imagine, however. “Lisa is totally blind,” says Jeremy, a fact she revealed to him in her very first letter. Lisa recalls hanging on every word as a loved one read each of 36
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Jeremy’s letters aloud to her. She’d then type her replies, print them and have someone help with mailing. Through their letters, they quickly discovered they had much in common. She loved his sense of humour and caring nature; he loved her upbeat personality and perpetual positivity. “We bonded right away, just through the mail,” says Jeremy, who was living in his hometown of King’s Point at that time, a three-hour drive from Lisa’s Noggin Cove home. Eventually, the pen pals connected by phone. “We used to talk for hours. I’d say we drove his mother off of her head,” laughs Lisa. “I was just comfortable talking to him from the beginning.” Five months after her first letter to Jeremy was postmarked, they 1-888-588-6353
