Our First “Walk and Talk”

Feature Image © Neil Miller

It all started with the thought “How can we get together in a spontaneous manner?” without having to go through a lot of planning…something interesting and relaxing. To me the answer was a morning walk. So, the ‘A Walk and Talk’ idea developed. I asked Fred Ullrich, our vice president, what he thought about the idea, and the responses he gathered in conversations were “let’s do it”! That is all I needed!

To me the perfect place to get together is the downtown Tempe area. It is centrally located and has all the requirements needed including free parking on Saturday. I also had an ulterior motive for the meeting place. There is a group of historic homes from the Tempe area that were moved to the location some years back. It turns out I had an office in one of them from 1979-1983. I thought the story might be interesting to those who participated.

A plan was put in place, and an email sent out to our membership. The date was set for October 15. The weather on that morning was just perfect. We had clouds with a chance of rain, so it was suggested to bring an umbrella. We had eight members arrive at the meeting point. Before the walk began, I brought up the reason for this particular meeting place. The home at the site was originally located at the southwest corner of East University Drive and South Forest Avenue. The entire house was dismantled and put in storage to be reassembled at a later date in the location we were meeting. My history with the home is that over a four-year period I coordinated a program in the College of Architecture, Design Science Department called Visual Communication Design. This home was the center of student activity while they were in the program. I brought a photograph using my 5×7 Deardorff of the first graduating class taken just outside the patio. It was gratifying to be able to share these details with friends. Fred took the photograph of our group just to the right of this location. It was a then-and-now moment.

As we started walking the planned route, discussions broke out and cameras started clicking. Overall, the area was peaceful. We heard rumors that there was an Iron Man event happening by Tempe Town Lake, but it turned out to be set for the following day. As we continued along, some of the group lagged behind to the point where we slowed down to let them catch up. Minutes later we reached an intersection and low and behold ahead of us were the laggers, Margaret and Fred! An alert Valley Metro driver saw our group and surprisingly offered to pick up Margaret and Fred and move them to the front of our meandering group. Interesting antidotes were shared during the walk. There was a consensus that we needed to get out more! Margaret indicated the walk encouraged her to charge her camera batteries and travel to Tempe. Emily and Susan found it interesting that although they have not met before Emily had been following Susan on Instagram. I imagine other connections were made throughout the morning, and even though we made a wrong turn and missed the planned route, we still arrived at the Daily Jam where a table was available. The rain began to pour just as we were ordering. I would like to say ‘as planned’ but it was probably just dumb luck. Believe it or not, when we left the rain stopped.