Sara (Sally) Gallet remembers the excitement in her friend Adelaide’s voice one afternoon in the summer of 1955.
“Get on your bike and ride over — Dave Pederson is here!” she recalled her friend whispering into the phone.
Sally jumped on her bike for the five-mile trek, and soon found herself face-to-face with the handsome high school junior.
“Oh, hi. I’m Sally,” she said, casually concealing any evidence of her year-long freshman crush.
“I could barely look at him,” she recalled. “He was so smart, so good-looking and athletic. I was one of those girls that blended into the wallpaper.”
Dave, who grew up in the same small Upstate New York town, smiled and responded, “I know you.”
Dave had first noticed Sally when they both worked at a local farm — he bailing hay, she selling milk in the store.
“My mother would send me in to buy milk,” he recalled. “When I didn’t come home for over an hour, she’d ask how long it took to buy a quart of milk.”
Dave offered to put Sally’s bike in the back of his Buick that memorable summer day. And when, on the ride home, he asked if she’d like to go out with him, she accepted.
Those were the days, according to Sally, when everyone had a boyfriend, there were school dances, and the women wore their boyfriends’ class rings around their necks.
“All those schmaltzy things we did in the 50s,” she said.
Dave went on to the Air Force Academy, and before heading to pilot training at Webb Air Force Base in Texas, he presented Sally with an engagement ring.
“The Air Force told the officers that they wanted them to be married,” Sally said. “They wanted their wives to stay home and to provide a safe home life so the men could go off to war.”
For the young and curious Sally, completing college was non-negotiable. Dave tried to reassure her that she didn’t have to worry about a college degree, reminding her that she would be married to an officer.
“It was the worst thing he could have said,” she mused. “I wasn’t like other girls. This was in 1962 and you didn’t have a lot of women going to college to get degrees. A lot of girls wanted to get married and have kids. I was not interested in that.”
The engagement was called off, and with their parting of ways, both were free to pursue their individual dreams. Dave found love again, married, and became a father of three. A stellar career of 32 years in the Air Force earned him the rank of two-star general.
Sally earned several degrees, including a master’s in French from Middlebury College, with two years at the Sorbonne in Paris, and another degree, this one in psychology. She married a man she met in Paris, moved back to the United States with their two daughters, and thrived in her work as a school counselor.
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Nearly 50 years had passed when Sally — at that point single, retired, and rotating time between Marblehead and St. Petersburg, Fla. — received an email from Dave. He, retired and widowed, asked how she was, whether she goes by Sara or Sally, and ended with: “I think about you from time to time and just wondered how you are.”
Sally began to cry.
“You have all these memories of when you were a kid, and the friends and boyfriends who are so very special,” she said. “They know everything about you. They knew you before you had titles.”
In the fall of 2011, the pair arranged to meet. “I got out of the car, he got out of the car, and we just walked into each other’s arms,” she said.
They have been together ever since, with 15 grandchildren between the two of them.
“I think we have been together all those years. I always thought about him and I know he thought about me. We always wished each other well and now, 49 years later, we were ready to be just Sally and Dave.”
Leslie Martini is a freelance writer and children’s book author. Though she and her family have lived in Marblehead for more than 26 years, Leslie is still discovering countless untold stories. If you’d like to share your story, please contact leslie@marbleheadweeklynews.com.