Reincarnation and the Real Story of 'Somewhere In Time'

From the time that I was little, I always believed that girls and boys were equal. I never believed anything that suggested that the male gender was in any way superior.

I always had a big heart and wanted to find the right girl to give it to.

I was very affected by an episode of The Hardy Boys called 'The Last Kiss of Summer' in which Joe's fiancee died in a car accident. The episode also featured the song 'If' by Bread, which made a big impact on me as well. I was also profoundly saddened when Dorothy Stratten was murdered by her
estranged husband. (Years later, I acquired a sterling silver bracelet that belonged to Dorothy and it
retains a very warm feeling from her.)

In that year of 1980, when I was 13, what made the largest impression on me was the film 'Somewhere In Time'. I was completely captivated by the story. I read Richard Matheson's novel 'Bid Time Return' which was the basis for the movie. Later, I found out about Mr Matheson's inspiration for the story: Maude Adams....a beautiful and talented young woman with a kind heart who never found the right person to share her life with. From that day on, she was never far from my thoughts....

Fast forward to late 2004. I was 37 and feeling quite down....beginning to believe that I would never find the right girl for me. I had not been pursuing the fulfillment of a fantasy....had not been requiring anyone to live up to an ideal. I just had not encountered that special connection that is so important.

Then I was suddenly and inexplicably drawn back to an online dating site that I had sworn I would not return to because of having encountered some individuals who needed some serious mental help.

But this time was different. This time I met Sherry....a young woman whom I knew very quickly was the one whom I had been searching for all my life....and she felt the same about me. She had also been drawn to the site for a reason that she could not explain, because online dating was something that she had vowed to avoid.

We did not immediately trade photos. It was not something that was important to us. We knew how we felt about each other and appearances were not a consideration.

When we finally exchanged photos, I received a shock that words are just inadequate to describe....she looked exactly like Maude Adams!

I asked her if she knew who Maude was. She said that she had never happened to hear of her. When she saw photos of Maude, she was also shocked.

Sherry and I got married on June 6, 2005. We have been extremely happy ever since. Over the years, as I have come to know her and see photos of her from childhood on, I have become convinced that she is Maude Adams reincarnated. Her height and weight and even her hands are the same. She has the same warm, generous heart. Once again, she started acting on stage at a young age. She even shares her April 23rd birthday with William Shakespeare.

The stage role that gave Maude Adams her big break was 'The Little Minister'. When I met Sherry, and for some time thereafter until we both broke away from Christianity because of things that we did not like about it, she was an ordained Christian minister. Because of her stature, Sherry was known as 'the little minister'.

Months ago, Sherry began teasing me by adopting a Spanish accent. I teased her back by calling her 'My Little Pepita'....pepita is literally 'pumpkin seed'. A couple of weeks ago, we were astounded to learn that one of Maude Adams' plays was 'The Pretty Sister of Jose'....the character she played was Pepita!

My old home town is Watkins Glen, NY. Ithaca is only a stone's throw away. We were there a few
years ago and were in a section of town that neither one of us had ever been to in this life....yet it seemed eerily familiar. Just a short time ago, we learned that on February 10, 1904, Maude Adams was in Ithaca, starring in 'The Pretty Sister of Jose'!

The connections go on and on. But I bet you are wanting to see the photos, so here they are. Please excuse the quality of some of them. The ones of Maude are obviously old....and some of the ones of Sherry are taken from old polaroids that my scanner doesn't like to work with very well. But, except for enlarging, the photos have not been altered:



























As you can see in that last photo, Sherry has the ability....as Maude did....to subtly alter her looks in order to successfully portray male characters. We write and act out our own plays, for our own enjoyment. In that one she was portraying a World War II bomber pilot.

Sometimes, someone will resemble someone else in passing. But this is very different. Sherry has resembled Maude for many years, without trying to do so, and still does. And her personality and the many other connections add to our belief that that is exactly who she was.

This is a wonderfull story. Thank you so much for sharing it with us.
You and Sherry are Living One Vibrational Energy that so magically brought you together.

Rumi said

Your body is away from me,
but there is a window open
from my heart to yours.
From this window, like the moon,
I keep sending news secretly.

From the   this is how the two of you  talked to one another before you even met.



Love from me
mudra

Starsea, thank you so much for sharing your story. I kept getting chills over and over again when reading it knowing it was a true reincarnation experience for you two. How fortunate you both are to have discovered each other and marry.

Aloha and mahalo nui loa,

Carol

Thank You for the interest in our story. I will try to add more here when I think of things that people might find interesting about our lives so far and what happens as we move forward.

Dayton, Ohio is not far north of here. In 1913, there was a bad flood that took the lives of 400 people. At that time, Maude donated generously to the relief effort. We just found out about that a few weeks ago. Two years ago, after the tornado hit Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Sherry and I went down and devoted two months to helping with the relief effort.

At the time that we met, in December of 2004, I had just lost my father. I had taken care of him since graduating from college in 1989 because he was legally blind from Diabetes and had a lot of other health problems. We were very close, but the Diabetes and the manufacturer's change in insulin brought about mood swings and changes in personality that were very extreme at times. About half the time things were fine and the other half they were the exact opposite. There were times when he held a loaded gun on me and said that he wanted me dead. The only way that I could get through those times emotionally was to tell myself that it was the disease talking and not my dad....and to concentrate on that 50% of the time or so that was still good. I had been absolutely determined not to see him be put into a nursing home. He had always said that when it was his time to pass away, he wanted to go peacefully in his own bed in his own home. Thankfully, that's what happened. I was right there with him and he was not alone. And I had been playing the soundtrack from 'Somewhere In Time' and other beautiful music for him.

Sherry went through a lot of heartache of her own in this time. Her biological parents were a couple of teen nightmares and she was adopted by her great aunt and uncle who became mom and dad to her and whom she was very close to over the years. By the time I met her, Sherry had been through 2 bad marriages and a bad engagement in between. The first husband turned out to be a wife beater and the second husband turned out to be a child molester. When I met her, she was away from the second husband, but custody of his two children from a previous marriage was still undecided. There was a night when he had asked to meet her in some out-of-the-way location to discuss the matter. He did not know that she had met me. I rode along with her. When we arrived, it was dark outside and he didn't immediately see me until we were both walking over to his car. When he did, he started his car again and took off. Sherry headed back to her car, but I started chasing the guy on foot. It was like a scene right out of 'Lethal Weapon 2' when Riggs started running after the BMW.  
Anyhow, about that time another guy suddenly sits up from having been concealed in the back of the ex husband's car. That only makes me chase the car that much faster, because I have a strong sense that Sherry was not intended to come back from that meeting. Sherry catches up to me in her car and I get in and we chase them some more. Where do they go? The police station! Because they were scared of this crazy guy chasing them!  I am the most peaceful person you would ever meet....but if someone threatens my family and loved ones, look out!

Sherry's dad passed away 4 months after mine did. Her mom passed away 15 months after that. Her brother passed away 12 months later. My brother passed away 11 months after that. We lost 5 close family members in 5 years. We are looking after my mom now, who is 86 but is so far in reasonably good health.

We have had trials and tribulations, but a lot of good times too. After helping in Alabama, we went up to Oregon for a while and we had a snowball fight up on Mount Hood in August! Shortly after we left there, a lightning strike started a big wildfire.

Over the years....from the time we were both born, actually....we have had a lot of narrow escapes. We often feel as if we are right at the heart of the struggle between positive and negative forces. Take today as an example. I ran an errand, came back, parked in the driveway....and the brake pedal on my truck went all the way to the floor. Within minutes, all of the brake fluid was out in a big puddle on the concrete. Tomorrow, I was scheduled to take the truck about 150 miles round trip. If that had happened somewhere along the way....

Negative forces get their licks in, but positive forces counter where they can.  

I thought I would take a bit of space here to relate how the theater ties in with me as well. I enjoyed plays from a young age. In second grade, my class put on a play called "The King's Christmas". I was a Christmas tree.   I had the honor of welcoming the audience and opening the play. There were other plays over the next few years. In sixth grade, I had worked hard rehearsing the role of Captain of the 'HMS Pinafore'. Then, someone in the school administration made the decision to just up and cancel the whole thing. I quit after that, because I did not want the same thing to happen again. That's why just Sherry and I doing our own plays together just for ourselves is so much fun....no cancellations!  

I guess you could say that things to do with the theater run in my blood.
My father was a theater manager prior to World War II and up through the end
of 1952, with a three year and three month gap for his service in the war (In the
Pacific....New Guinea, Morotai, and Mindanao.) The last theater that he managed
before entering the service was the Bardavon Theater, Poughkeepsie, NY. That
was restored quite a number of years ago and I found out about it and showed him
the information about it before he passed away. He was happy to know that it was
saved from the wrecking ball.

When he was working there, he had a friend who was a theater manager in New
York City. The friend invited him down for a visit one time when the Dorsey brothers
and Frank Sinatra were there.

When the friend introduced my dad to Sinatra, and Frank heard my dad's last name,
Frank gave him a look and burst out with "You're a godd*m German!"

Never one to be intimidated by celebrity, or miss a beat, my dad looked Frank squarely
in the eye and said "Yeah, and you're a f*cking wop!"

I guess you could have heard a pin drop for a moment, until Frank
started laughing his head off....it had managed to penetrate his boozed-up brain
that Germany and Italy were both on the Axis side!

The tales of Frank and the Dorseys' liquor consumption were no exaggeration....but
that is an incident that probably won't find its way into a Sinatra biography!  

When the war was over and the GIs were coming home, my dad was with a group that
stopped off at a bar in San Francisco. They were there for a while when all of a sudden
in walks John Wayne. He shook hands with every single GI in there, thanked them for
their service to their country, and bought them a round of drinks.

After the war, when my dad was managing a theater in Corning, NY, there was a day
when a young guy came in who asked for his advice about how to get into the business
of acting in the movies. My dad recommended going to New York City for acting classes.
That young man was James Whitmore, who went on to have quite a career....including the
memorable role of 'Brooks' in 'The Shawshank Redemption' and as the spokesman for
'Miracle Grow' plant food for a lot of years....as well as advising James Dean.

My dad met a lot of stars over the years. I still have autographed photos that he received
from Rita Hayworth and Linda Christian.

In the mid 1960s, my dad was able to do something in return for John Wayne. At the time,
The Duke was restoring his yacht, 'The Wild Goose'....which was a converted minesweeper.
He had contracted with Ingersoll-Rand for some air compressors and parts, but I-R was
months behind with the order. When my dad, who was working for I-R at the time, found
out about it, he talked to him and told him that he would get the paperwork unsnarled and
the order immediately expedited....which he did.

About the same time, my dad was down in Watkins Glen one day and this young woman
stopped him on the street and said, "Hey handsome, can you tell me how to get to Corning
Summer Theater?"  That was Rue McClanahan.

Perhaps the most poignant story comes from when my grandmother was working for actor
Robert Montgomery a long time ago. My dad was visiting her there one day when little
Elizabeth was home and he bounced her on his knee. Years later, she went on to star in
'Bewitched'....a show that I enjoyed as a child and still do. My dad was still alive when
Elizabeth passed away from cancer and that was a very sad time for both of us.

My parents and Sherry's adopted parents were of the same generation, so we both grew up hearing about The Great Depression and World War II and many other things that a lot of people our age are not very familiar with.

We share so much in common and are so very happy together. We are as much in love today as when we first met. We act like a couple of teenagers. We are not only husband and wife....we are also best friends who can tell each other anything. We have absolute trust and confidence in each other. We feel extremely blessed and we work very hard to be the kind of people who are worthy of those blessings.

We were saddened to hear of Richard Matheson's passing, but we wish him the very best wherever he may be. We can't help but believe that he wrote his novel just for us....and so it is our duty to share our story with others.

Love....and believe in what others might ridicule....because you never know where it might lead you.

Where there are true hearts and true love, all things are possible.

Thank you for sharing StarSea. It's great to read such positive affirmations here at the forum when there's just a little too much negativity around these days. What a wonderful gift you have in each other's love.