Roger Broederdorf:  

I thought I would write down a few of the events of my life for the past year. After a very depressing and bumpy ride through September of 2011, I have sort of rebounded in 2012 and am what you might call starting over again. My wife Linda passed away on September 8th of 2011 after a very long struggle with heart and lung problems from blood clotting. It was very difficult for me to give the order to turn off the respirator and slowly watch her stop breathing. Two weeks later my right foot literally fell apart from the tendons being stretched out and in November I underwent a five hour surgery to put my foot back together and then given a donor tendon in my leg. I guess the tendon in my right leg was worthless. I now boast seven screws and a steel plate in my right foot along with the donated ankle bone graft and leg tendon. I am still not walking normal yet, but at least I can walk again without crutches. In November of 2011 I met and executive chef online through one of the many dating services that there are. Maybe I should not have signed up for these, but Linda always made me promise if she were to pass, I was not to sit around and become a hermit. She made me promise I would date within a month of her passing. I did not keep that promise, too difficult to do. The chef's name was Lidia (Lee-dee-ya) and she lived in the city of Lipetsk, Russia. We were just good friends at first and then after the first of this year we decided to see if we could be more than just good friends. In April, I boarded a jet out of Washington D.C. and went to Moscow where she picked me up and drove me back to Lipetsk about 300 miles south of Moscow. We stayed together for five weeks and it appears we have much in common and enjoy each others company much more than just friends. We are now working on getting her a K-1 visa to come to America and eventually become a family. Lidia has a young daughter named Margarita and she will also come with her. I am still trying to recover my foot to where I can work again. There are not many jobs in this area of Wisconsin and because of my lengthy recovery, I lost my position with the company I had worked for the last eleven years. I do have a degree in engineering and so I am pursuing a job back in this field of employment. I will probably sell my small farm and head west to the Dakotas where jobs are abundant. I also have family out there. I do not think I have been to a reunion in over twenty years, so coming to this one, even though it appears to be a very small reunion will get me back in touch with some people from my past. (9-6-2012)Just to update things a little. Life can change fast and it took less than a week to be hired for an Research and Development Engineer position for a company in Fargo, North Dakota. As I write this I am literally tearing my home apart and getting ready for my relocation. It has almost been a year since my wife died, I think Saturday will be a difficult day for me as that is the day she passed in 2011. I attended the class reunion in June and had a wonderful time, nice job committee on putting together a very fun informal affair. My relationship with Lidia continues to go forward and we are engaged to get married as soon as the papers clear for her and her daughter to come to America which will be about this time in 2013. I will continue to add little updates as time goes by and ther...Expand for more