While on vacation in Ireland in 2011, he had a short conversation with a “striking” young woman. It was quick — barely enough time to chat about the weather and ask for directions to a local landmark — but the memory of her was so strong that he set out to find her a year later. He never got her name, so all he had to go on was the town where they met (Ennistymon) and a vague description: in her mid-twenties with freckles and reddish-brown hair. Talk about some long odds.
Here’s his segment from Good Morning America from the summer of 2012:
He never found her, but as he said after his failed search:
“You know what? You have to hold out hope in life, and it is just a situation where if you didn’t come and do it and see if you could find the girl, fifty years down the road you’d regret it. This is making sure that this isn’t something you didn’t do nothing about.”
It’s a more down-home Canadian version of those lines from Maud Muller: “For of all sad words of tongue or pen / The saddest are these: “It might have been!”
Three years have passed since that time, and I wonder what happened to him. I hope he met someone nice.
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There was a similar story that went "viral" in pre-Internet days. It involved someone (American?) meeting a French girl, also in Ireland, on a sailing course. The resources of Digital Equipment Corporation's global network were brought to bear in tracking her down ... successfully. Her name was Fanny Puppink. There were daily updates. People got excited. I think the last update was "I've spoken to her father". No idea how it ended. Probably not happily ever after.
That was when DECnet was the most extensive network in the world.