Sharon Downing, widow of the late BJ printer Hugh Downing, had a harrowing experience in her home in The Villages, Florida.

Sharon and friend Kathie Silva, also a widow, hunkered down as the eye of Hurricane Irma passed over Sharon’s house on 87^th Bourne Avenue in the Village of Piedmont (The Villages is an amalgamation of about two dozen villages, and is not an incorporated city even though it has 120,000 residents, with every owner 55 or older).

32 people died in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Sharon and Kathie did not.

1970s BJ State Desk reporter turned clinical psychologist Paula Stone Tucker and I played golf with Sharon and Kathie last winter during our annual stay (4 months for me, 6 months for homeowner Paula Tucker, who shares a Tallmadge condo with BJ retiree John Olesky).

The two were close before their husbands died. They are even tighter as widows.

Sharon and Hugh moved to The Villages in 2000 from Medina. Both are from Galion, Ohio. They were married for 56 years.

Hugh and Sharon were a big help to Paula and John since they first showed up in 2013 in The Villages, Florida, where every day is playday for the residents with free golf, live outdoor music and dancing, card games, every sport imaginable geared down for senior citizens. They showed us the ropes, where to find this, where to do that.

Hugh arranged our weekly Thursday golf tee times with former BJ State Desk reporter Bob Page, who is an associate pastor at the Live Oaks Community Church in The Villages.

Bob’s first wife, Linda, was with him on Sackett Avenue in Cuyahoga Falls and their Barberton home before he left the BJ (1968-73) to study for the ministry.

Bob met his current wife, Vicky, through his congregation.

Hugh and Sharon’s children are Mark Downing, who lives in Erie, Pennsylvania; Chris, who lives in Hudson; Ben and Jonathan, who live in Toledo and Vienna, Virginia.

My late wife, Monnie Turkette Olesky of Cinderella, West Virginia, and I got together with Hugh and Sharon at the turn of the century on Siesta Key, adjacent to Sarasota, Florida, when Hugh and Sharon were staying in the late printer Bill Gorrell’s former Poor Bill’s rentals just across the street from the beach and the Gulf of Mexico.

Before that, of course, Hugh and I exchanged pleasantries at Ol’ Blue Walls, including when he was working in the APS-4 computer room in Composing.

Hugh was among the 45 retired printers who won the 2012 health care lawsuit against the Beacon Journal that restored their prescription co-pay benefits.

Five Guild retirees, including John Olesky who filed the lawsuit on their behalf, also piggybacked on the lawsuit that the late Composing foreman Dave White started in 2009.