Category: Randomness

NC Couple Met At A Doughnut Shop 67 Years Ago Still Married

 

Sam and Wiloree Johnson in the living room of their home in Raleigh, N.C., on Feb. 3, 2016. (Jill Knight/Raleigh News
 
“She’s my first wife,” jokes Sam Johnson. “The only one I’ll ever have.”

Wiloree throws her head back and laughs. “Oh my,” she says under her breath while looking at Sam. It’s his favorite joke, even after 67 years of marriage.

Sam and Wiloree Johnson, both 91 years old, have a love story made for movie screens.

The pair met on Fayetteville Street in Raleigh the 1940s. Wiloree was with friends headed to the doughnut shop when Sam first saw her. He met them there and offered the girls a ride home, saving them the bus fare. The Johnsons’ children will tell you that “Momma pushed a friend out of the way” that day to make sure Sam was hers. She’ll laugh and tell you it wasn’t a push, but a gentle nudge.

Sam, an N.C. State University graduate who had recently returned from serving in the U.S. Air Force, had found the one that made his heart beat faster.

After wedding in Bethel Hill in 1948, Sam and Wiloree raised a family in Raleigh.

They’ve shared kisses on the Boylan Street bridge, held hands walking down Fayetteville Street and maintained a sewing machine shop in Raleigh for more than 50 years.

In a small concrete building just a stone’s throw from Lake Wheeler Road, you’ll find Sam even today sitting in the bright window light of the Archie Johnson & Sons sewing machine shop. Wiloree jokes that Sam “loves those sewing machines more than me.”

Each weekday, Sam walks a couple hundred feet to the shop to work on sewing machines. Wiloree works in the kitchen to prepare a big lunch for her husband and some of her grown children, who now lend a hand in the shop that was passed down to Sam from his father. They eat leftovers for dinner once Sam comes in from the shop and spend time watching TV together in the evening before bed.

Would they change anything about their marriage?

“When we lived out in the other house we had some kind of refrigerator that had a big old tank on it,” Wiloree said. “I would have liked to have had a better refrigerator.”

Theirs is a love so sweet the only regret is the quality of the appliances in the house years ago.

Almost.

“Nothing is perfect,” Wiloree cautions. “Nothing is going to go good all of the time. But if you love each other like you’re supposed to love each other, you’ll put up with anything.

“I can’t be right all of the time,” she says, laughing.

“You just about are,” Sam adds.

By Jill Knight – The News & Observer 

MRI Appears To Show Twin Siblings Fighting In The Womb

  
This incredible video shows two twin siblings appearing to be struggling to get comfortable inside the womb. 

An MRI shows two babies as they are appearing to repeatedly fight and make up… Typical of siblings. Especially me and my sisters & brothers. 

The bigger of the two appears to not only be getting more of the food, but more of the space. 

It looks like these babies are already fighting, and making up, while in the uterus! It is amazing how much we can see in the womb today with modern technology. These images were taken from an MRI scan, or magnetic resonance imaging. 

The details that can be seen are incredible, especially the way these two little people are moving around trying to get comfortable. It seems sibling rivalry has already begun in the womb, at one point one twin seems downright frustrated, and kicks repeatedly at the other baby. The way the baby on the left moves its head and jaw, (watch closely at 100) for a second, it very sweetly looks like it kisses the other baby on top of the head.

This scan was done as part of a medical study in London, and the pictures were taken while the researchers, and Dr. Marisa Taylor-Clarke, were studying a rare medical condition that affects twins. 

We at Faithreel.com are grateful they shared this, it is a lot like seeing into a mysterious world we used to know so little about. These little babies are a beautiful sight to behold, and we’ve had the privilege of seeing what love looks like growing beneath.

–Faithreel.com

Check out the precious video of the MRI and join the discussion:

NEW STUDY: 85 Percent Blacks Killed With Guns

  
Though they make up only 13 percent of the U.S. population, African Americans account for half of all homicide victims and 85 percent of those cases involve guns, according to the results of a study released by a national gun violence prevention group.

Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the liberal-leaning Violence Policy Center, said in a statement. 

“In America, black men and women face a disproportionate risk of being murdered, a fact both alarming and unacceptable. Moreover, our study found that the vast majority of these homicides are committed with guns, usually a handgun. We hope our research will not only help educate the public and policymakers, but aid those national, state, and community leaders who are already working to end this grave injustice.”

Sugarmann’s group analyzed 2013 data collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and put it into its 10th annual report, which stratifies the information on the state level and ranks those with the highest rate of homicide.

Indiana had the highest rate of black homicides, with 34.15 per 100,000 population. Missouri had the second highest rate, with 30.42 black homicides per 100,000, followed by Michigan with 30.34, Nebraska with 27.65 and Oklahoma with 27.36. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Louisiana, California and New Jersey also have high rates of black homicide.

The number of black people killed in the U.S. is disproportionately high when compared to white people, but that rate looks staggeringly higher when comparing the homicide rates in other developed nations.

And it’s not just crime or gang violence that’s causing so many African Americans to be killed. The study also included 140 “justifiable homicides” of black people nationwide by law enforcement in 2013.

Some 68 percent of cases occurred not in connection to any other felony. Of those, 51 percent involved arguments between victim and attacker. Only 15 percent were determined to be gang-related.

A total of 6,217 black people were killed in the U.S. that year at a rate of 16.91, where the overall national homicide rate was 4.27 and the white homicide rate was 2.54.

Of the total black homicides nationwide, 87 percent were male, for a rate of 30.59. The white male homicide rate was just 3.71 per 100,000 population.

In the cases where a relationship between the victim and offender could be identified, approximately 72 percent of black victims were killed by someone familiar to them, the study found.

The report states:

“The devastation homicide inflicts on black teens and adults is a national crisis that should be a top priority for policymakers to address. An important part of ending our nation’s gun violence epidemic will involve reducing homicides in the African-American community. For black victims of homicide, like all victims of homicide, guns — usually handguns — are far and away the number-one murder tool. Successful efforts to reduce America’s black homicide toll, like America’s homicide toll as a whole, must put a focus on reducing access and exposure to firearms.”