By Gretchen WIng

Norma and Richard Peal met in kindergarten—Eldorado, Kansas, 1937—but their romance took forever to bud…well, till eighth grade, anyway. “He was cutting up and making fun, and I took a book and hit him over the head with it,” says Norma. Marriage was inevitable.

Actually, Richard had noticed Norma while baling hay on her dad’s farm. A year out of high school, the couple married and entered junior college. Richard finished up at Kansas State with an electrical engineering degree, while Norma worked in the student counseling office, and life began to accelerate.

In 1954, a job with RCA brought the Peals to Camden, New Jersey. That same year, their first child arrived, and Richard was informed of his impending draft. The Peals decided that Richard would volunteer rather than wait, and Norma returned to Kansas to live with her parents, for support with their baby daughter.

Luckily, Richard’s first orders after basic training were to Fort Monmouth, back in New Jersey, where Norma and the baby could join him. But in short order, Richard’s engineering skills got him assigned to a missile guidance course in Huntsville, Alabama, so the young family headed there.

1957 Alabama was a bit of a shock. On Memorial Day, the Peals decided to visit the military cemetery to pay their respects and “see the pretty flowers on the graves,” Norma says. “There wasn’t a flower in the cemetery. We came back home and told our landlord, and he said, ‘That’s a g-d Yankee holiday. We don’t do that in the South.’” “It was an education,” Richard muses. “Nice people, but…if you came from the North, you were never ‘in.’” The couple was relieved to be sent back to New Jersey after a few months (though they did develop a taste for barbeque). Norma had their second child; Richard became a missile instructor.

The Cold War was a great employer. In 1956, Boeing offered Richard a job in Wichita working on the Bomarc missile, close to home. Although the Bomarc was never produced, Richard found work integrating new technology into B-52s and proposing designs for other new Boeing aircraft. Norma’s job: two new daughters.

In 1962, thanks to Boeing, the Peals became Northwesterners. After a brief stint in Federal Way, the family moved to a neighborhood in Bellevue. Other Midwesterners lived there, so the Peals felt right at home. They had barbecues; their kids played soccer. The northwest offered “so much to see and do,” Norma says. When the possibility arose of moving back to Kansas, Richard laughs, “Norma says, ‘If you go back to Wichita, that’s fine, but send money and write—in that order.’” Washington was home. “My hay fever completely disappeared!” Norma adds. In the 1980s, she worked as an assistant to the elderly, then kept books for a Japanese petrochemical company.

Lopez entered the Peals’ lives via Jean and Phil Weinheimer, who invited them for a visit. “It’s kind of a Kansas culture,” says Richard. “The pony farm was here, over a hundred ponies…it felt like stepping out of Bellevue into Kansas.” They found a place by the water near the ferry, and spent all their free time improving it. When Richard retired in 1996, the Peals became full-timers.

Classic Lopezian “retirees,” Norma and Richard threw themselves into volunteering. Richard became site manager for construction of Lopez Community Center, among other jobs. Norma developed programs for the Garden Club, then got involved with the Thrift Shop. Noticing how often other volunteers missed their shifts, Norma made herself coordinator, with true Midwestern efficiency. The task could be exhausting. “I’d start calling around five o’clock,” she says. “Sometimes you’d have to call six, eight people a night,” trying to fill a shift. For years, “I donated my time every night, watching her call,” Richard deadpans. “It’s just amazing how many volunteers there are on this island,” he adds. “It just grabs you.”

The payoff for all those hours comes on July Fourth, when the Peal family drives the Thrift Shop T-shirt truck in the parade. Those hurled T-shirts you try to catch, stomping some poor tourist family in the process? Each one has been rolled and bagged by Norma. Twenty-five T-shirts to a bag, the truck bed three-deep in bags. How many shirts total? The Peals estimate close to a thousand. These days their grandson drives the truck, and kids vie to ride in the back and fling.

Recently, Norma gave up volunteer coordinating. Richard is now confined to a wheelchair, requiring full-time support. But there’s Book Club, and Creaky Yoga, and family. With 10 grand- and five great-grandchildren, “something’s always going on.” All but one of their kids’ families lives in Washington, so visits are constant. But Norma is still at the Thrift Shop every Monday, rolling those T-shirts. Next time you leap to catch one, think of all the hours of work behind that flying shirt—unvaunted, practical, neighborly, Kansan work.