This page is dedicated to Cathy Ann Heagarty (1961-2000)

I just can't write a lot right now but will be telling the world all about my "squirt" and who she was and still is to me and our family.

Cathy and I met through her best friend Beth Lewis. Beth was dating Scott Hottinger in Newark Ohio and I had hired Scott to be my Manager Trainee at Shoe World in Heath Ohio. I told Beth that she could come to work for us but had 30 days to find me a date as I was new to the area. She found me her best friend!

Cathy and I had our first date at 8:30pm September 15, 1979. We went to see "Escape From Alcatraz" starring Clint Eastwood. I asked her after the movie if I could hold her hand (I was quite backward with girls). She told me that I could as long as I didn't try to hold anything else! That was a long running joke with us for the rest of our marriage.

I asked Cathy to marry me in Xenia Ohio February 9, 1980. I secretly brought the  ring with me when we went to Xenia to visit Beth and Scott who were now married and running the Shoe World there. It was a beautiful cold winter day in Xenia, snow on the ground and that crisp winter bite in the air. I asked one of Scott's employees to suggest a romantic place to pop "the question". She suggested the gazebo in a local park. It was absolutely beautiful, like a Currier & Ives postcard. Cathy and I had been talking on the way to Xenia about getting married and how I couldn't yet afford a ring and promised to buy her one just as soon as I could. I was busting out the whole day with the ring burning a hole in my pocket! We sat close together and I simply pulled the ring box out and opened it with one hand while we were talking. I held it low in front of her and had to wait until she looked away from me and down to the ring. She of course immediately knew what I had been up to all day long and started crying. I asked her if she would marry me and she said YES. She then spent several minutes looking at her ring and asking me if it was real! Of course it was real! She later explained that when she was little she used to buy rings from Woolworth's and pretend she was married. It was just incredible to her that now she had her very own REAL diamond.

Cathy and I were married June 15, 1980 at 2:30pm, exactly nine months to the day from our first date! We were married in the North Parkersburg Baptist Church by Rev. Conrad Lowe. This is a picture of the steps that we came down that afternoon amidst a shower of rice and good wishes.

Cathy and I moved to Waynesburg, Pennsylvania and setup housekeeping in a single wide trailer.

We lived for a short time in Cambridge, Ohio where I interviewed with Radio Shack to work in one of their new Computer Centers. Cathy didn't really know how I was going to go from being a shoe salesman to a computer salesman but she trusted me.

We moved to the first apartment we saw in Canton, Ohio in March 1981. We believed in just going with the first thing that looked good without over thinking things too much. God was watching out for us before we realized it. The apartment was in a complex called Northern Lake Village, now known as Devonshire something-or-other over near the Belden Village Mall area.

Cathy worked for awhile at Wendy's on Belden Village Ave. in Canton. She had worked for Wendy's in Newark for several years in high school and really enjoyed it. The people in Canton treated her like a new kid with no experience so one day she decided to wear all her awards and buttons from her time at the corporate store. They asker her where she got all that stuff and she let them know that she had earned every last pin. She was the line coordinator for Wendy's at the Ohio State Fair one year so she had more experience than that whole crew combined. That was one of the few times that I saw Cathy proud of herself in any way. It was a good thing.

Justin Michael Heagarty is born December 28, 1981 at Timken Mercy hospital. When Cathy and I brought him home I left her there to go back to work. Of course I no longer remember what was so important that I had to go work on but she always remembered being 20 years old, in pain, and alone with her new baby.

Cathy would never admit it but she was a natural born Mom. She took to it so well and loved the boys like they could never understand.

We buy our first and only home in November 1986. The closing was a comedy of errors and the realtors didn't have the keys. I still remember the Raymond's that had owned the house giving us a key so that we could get in and look around that weekend. Cathy, Justin and I roamed all through the house and planned all the things we would do to it together.

OK, I'm getting kind of sappy and morose so I'm going to quit for now. I'll be back later and write more. Stay tuned...

Joseph Aloysius Heagarty III is born May 13, 1988

Cathy obtains her Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) license in 1989 and all hell breaks loose.

Cathy earns her Certified Medical Transcriptionist certificate in 1995.

She attends therapy at the Massillon Hospital Outpatient clinic and begins to look forward to life and gets a bit of a handle on things.

Cathy and I go to the Storey's for New Year's Eve 1999 and watch for Y2K. She remarks on the way home that she thinks 2000 is going to be "our year".