Change of Hearts

She had the bluest eyes he had ever seen. He was tall and strong and she always felt safe in his arms. Lynn was fifteen years old and was in love with a seventeen year old boy known in her Minneapolis neighborhood as "Boone".

His actul name was Byron, but he always hated his given name. He felt it was to "stuffy" and Boone was anything but. As the oldest of a Catholic family of eight children, Boone was born into the role of taking charge of things. The family was abandoned by his father at the height of the Great Depression, which sent his mother into a depression that was much more private and personally painful. Boone dropped out of school and went to work. He was hired as a factory worker at the Moline Factory at fifteen years old. Building tractors was not a dream of his, but he was compelled by circumstance and inborn sense of duty to provide for the family. His dream, if he ever had one, was to marry Lynn and start a family. Lynn was his "dream girl" and he could not imagine life without her.

Lynn was the youngest daughter of the neighborhood grocery store owner. She was quick-witted, sassy, and beautiful. Boone was drawn to her immediately one day in 1938 when he was in the store buying groceries for his mother after work. She had thick brown hair, sparkling blue eyes and was barely five feet tall. Lynn was the favored child and was cherished by her four older sisters, as well as coddled by her loving parents. All of that love pouired into her and created a charming young woman, full of confidence, and quick to find humor in nearly every situation. Her strict father and permissive mother taught her early how to manipulate them to get what she wanted.

After a few dates, they were inseperable. Lynn's father was not happy about the relationship, but was impressed with Boone and how he took care of his family. Boone was thoughtful and considerate, and was a good contrast to Lynn's impulsive and carefree personality. Boone wished he could be more like Lynn, but the burden of his family, coupled with his mother's depression, was such a weight on his shoulders that the only relief from it was spending time with Lynn. Boone carried his world on his shoulders; Lynne had freedom, and a breezy atitude toward life. She had the luxury of a stable home, two parents, and being the youngest of a cohesive family.

When Boone turned eighteen, he joined the Army. With World War II looming as inevitable in the conflicts overseas, Boone saw the Army as a way to escape the burdens of home, but in an honerable way. Lynn promised she would write and be true to him. Boone told her she was the only girl he would ever love.

Lynn graduated from high school and got a job driving streetcar in Minneapolis. She loved the people that rode her car, and was proud to be one of the first women to hold such a position. She missed Boone, but she was busy with helping in the family store and her new career as a "Majorette", which is what the female drivers were called.

One evening, at the end of her shift, Lynn found a small black notebook that someone had left behind in her streetcar. Intrigued, she picked it up and started reading inside. It appeared to be a diary of a man that was in a terrible situation. He had stolen $20,000 from a safe in a house where he had worked as a painter. The millionaire owner of the house, on a hunch, had pulled out his money from the bank and liquidated his investments just prior to the crash on Wall Street in 1929, thereby averting financial ruin. The diary owner expressed such guilt over so many wrong choices in his life, including this one- the theft, but he also detailed where he had hidden the money!

Lynn could not contain her curiosity, and for the next several days, she questioned her streetcar riders if they had lost a notebook, but to no avail. No one would claim ownership of the notebook.

Lynn decided that she would go find the money herself and then decide what to do with it. When she arrived at the hiding place, deep in the trees at Minnehaha Park near the waterfall, she discovered a middle-aged man sitting on the ground and weeping. Asking if she could help, the weeping man said no. She asked him if he had lost a notebook, as she suspected he was the painter who stole the money. The man looked at her abruptly, and said "Yes- how did you know?" Lynn replied, "How do you think I found you here? I found your notebook." Then man went on to say how he had carried such guilt for abandoning his family and when he saw the safe open with so much money in it, he thought that he take just a little and could give it to his wife and children and then he could come back home. He went on to say that his family had moved, and he had no idea where they were. Much to her suprise, Lynn discovers that the man sitting in front of her was Boone's missing father!

Lynn excitedly told the man where to find his family and explained her connection to Boone who was now overseas. They dug up the money and went to Boone's family home. Lynn was surprised when Boone answered the door! He tells her that he was injured in a training exercise and was discharged. He looks at the man with her with confusion and then happy tears. Would the man or the money be more welcome into the family? They both were.