NY POST
These two 80-year-old pen pals were stationary for 68 years, but they finally found a way to meet.
Patsy Gregory, from England, and Carol-Ann Krause, from New York, both 80, have been writing letters to each other from opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean since they were both 12 in 1955.
They discovered each other at that time when Gregory was involved in the UK’s Girl Guides and Krause was in the stateside Girl Scouts.
“In the Girl Guides, I happened to get Carol-Ann’s name,” Gregory explained to South West News Service. “We started writing and we never stopped. It’s as simple as that.”
“We’ve always remembered each other on our wedding anniversaries and at Christmas and stuff like that. And we’ve still continued corresponding even now,” said Krause.
They would write at least one letter every two months to each other, Gregory said, talking about school, who they went out with and what was new in their lives.
Over the past 68 years, the two women never stopped writing — exchanging, they estimate, more than 800 letters between them — and even went through similar life stages at the same time, including getting married just one year apart and each giving birth to three children.
“It was just things like that,” Gregory explained. “It was just as though I knew her all my life, but we just never met.”
Carol-Ann Krause (left) and Patsy Gregory, both 80, have been writing letters to each other from opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean since 1955.
Courtesy of Steph Calam / SWNS
But as her 80th birthday approached on June 6, Gregory confessed to her daughter, Steph Calam, that she always wanted to visit Krause, who now lives in Conway, South Carolina.
Her daughter used social media to track down Krause’s family and asked if they would be interested in a meet-up — to which they said yes, of course.
“I was more than happy to take her up on the offer. Our birthdays are only separated by a month,” Krause said.
After hearing that, Gregory’s family surprised her on her 80th birthday with a ticket to South Carolina to finally be able to meet her pen pal on July 14.
Courtesy of Steph Calam / SWNS
Courtesy of Steph Calam / SWNS
“It was quite emotional — it was lovely,” Gregory said about meeting Krause. “I recognized her straight away; she looked just like her photograph.
“It was just as though I’d seen her last week because we’d known of each other for so long,” she added.
Krause admitted that she was a bit nervous to finally meet her pen pal in person.
“It was emotional,” she said. “I was a bundle of nerves.”
Courtesy of Steph Calam / SWNS
“It was quite emotional — it was lovely,” Gregory said about meeting Krause.
Courtesy of Steph Calam / SWNS
Courtesy of Steph Calam / SWNS
During the visit, the two chatted for hours about their friendship and enjoyed visiting local sights and going out to eat.
“We did a lot of talking. We went out for quite a few different meals in places that Carol-Ann and her husband enjoyed going to,” Gregory gushed.
But, strangely enough, Gregory and Krause aren’t the only pen pals who have kept in touch with each other for years and years.
Last December, Celesta Byrne, who lives in the US, and Geoff Banks, from the UK, got tocelebrate their 100th birthdays together with their first video call after writing letters to each other for nearly 84 years.
The two first began communicating in 1938 when they were just 16, sending their first letters across 5,000 miles as part of an educational program to connect US and British students.
