Michael and Susan met at work. Susan was employed out of college into the same group that Michael worked in, both as civilians supporting the Navy. Our first date was a drive around Fredericksburg and a visit to Hot Shoppes Restaurant for chocolate ice cream cakes. That date must have gone well because six months later we were married.  Initially we lived in an apartment across from Mary Washington College, from which Susan had just graduated, making her the second of eventually three generations to do so (her mother, Susan, and our daughter).

About the time Susan became pregnant with our first child, Rebecca Lee, we began planning for our first house, a single story rambler on the east side of town, convenient for the morning commute to work. During those early years, we spent much time at the Spotsylvania farm of Susan’s grandparents, Mema and Papa, where Susan had spent many happy times as a child while growing up. The pond was a great place to swim and congregate with cousins, and Mema’s Sunday fried chicken dinners were always a welcome reason to visit.

During those years, we discovered that we were both traditionalist and that we deeply loved and respected Virginia’s long and storied history.  We made many trips to Williamsburg as well as a wonderful week long getaway to Charleston, South Carolina.  As we advanced in our marriage and a second pregnancy came along, we began planning for another house.  Not quite a dream house, perhaps, but a bigger one built along the lines of those beautiful colonial homes in Williamsburg.  Just as she had done with our first home, Susan carefully drew up alternative after alternative, this one for a two story home with dormers across the front – a style often called a story-and-a-half.  This time, however, we secured the services of an architectural team from Richmond to create the final plans.  It turned out to be a good move.  They made several suggestions that gave the house elegant curb appeal and increased the livability of the final plan.  We moved in over Thanksgiving weekend, 1978, and have lived there ever since.

For years our family vacation locations were Virginia Beach and Nags Head, North Carolina. However, Susan had grown up with ducks and geese on Mema and Papa’s Spotsylvania pond. In 1990, she decided that it was time to reconnect with her past. She suggested that we spend our summer vacation at Chincoteague Island, home of the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. Located on the Atlantic Flyway, Chincoteague NWR is one of the best refuges in the Mid-Atlantic area. I had been doing photography casually since graduating from college, mostly family and travel. But, since my eyes were starting to render manual focusing problematic -- and since I'm a gadget lover at heart! -- I ordered one of Minolta's early autofocus cameras, the 8000i and a modest selection of AF lenses for the trip, including a 100mm f/2.8macro and an excellent 200mm f/2.8 APO.

The first time I looked through the viewfinder and focused on a snowy egret in breeding plumage patrolling a stretch of water that came to be known as "Egret Alley," I was hooked!  Susan, always an indispensible partner in birding activities, soon thereafter acquired the nickname "Egret Herder" in honor of my favorite subject -- which she referred to affectionately as "the damned white bird"! This led to a major interest in bird photography by Michael, which has continued to the present. Eventually Michael changed brands to Canon and purchased a long telephoto lens suitable for bringing birds in really close.  We added an occasional trip to Florida to our vacation schedule, a location where the birds are plentiful and generally much more tame than the Mid-Atlantic. 

Since then, Chincoteague has been our family vacation location, and we've returned almost every year.  The refuge is ideal for our nature loving family -- bird behavior for Susan the birder, bird subjects for Michael the photographer, and ponies for Rebecca, the equestrian.  We call it the Island at the End of the Road, and when we make the big sweeping turn past the NASA facility onto the causeway across Chincoteague Bay, the cares of the world seem to fade away and the easy, relaxed island way of life takes over. The enjoyment is always the same, whether quietly studying bird behavior at the refuge, shopping at the Brant, enjoying a sunset across Chincoteague Bay at the end of the day, or dining on Crab Imperial at A.J.'s on the Creek. And now that we have a new generation to share it with, our grandson, it's even more fun.

One of Susan's biggest sources of enjoyment is gardening. During the spring and summer, every available daylight hour is spent in the yard cultivating plants and flowers, or cruising the local nurseries looking for new things to put in the ground. A few years ago we had our front yard professionally landscaped, turning it into a country garden, complete with stone wall. Now there's no grass to mow in that area and plenty of places to plant flowers as well. There is, however, lots of succulents for the local vole population to attack. But then, Susan rescued a very fortunate young abandoned kitten, whose name naturally became Lucky, who is being taught to catch the voles. Will work for food!

As a lifelong tennis player, after retirement Michael suggested that we incorporate tennis into our vacation plans as well, and we began to attend the Western & Southern Open professional tennis tournament in Cincinnati. Founded in 1898, Cincinnati is the oldest tournament in North America still held at the the same city of origin.  Recently it became a combined men's and women's event, co-hosting ATP Masters 1000 and WTA Premier Mandatory tournaments during the same week, providing an opportunity to see the world's top professional players competing at the same time.  This added a new dimension to Michael's photography in addition to travel, family, nature and birds.  The result was creation of a personal photography web site, GrayFoxImages.com.