Derek and Denise met a basketball game in 1992 through a mutual friend named Julia Getzel.  I never forgot the butterflies I felt when I first laid eyes on Derek.  He was practicing his 3 point shot and when he turned, I was hit  We spent almost two years doing what teenagers do... until personal tragedies seperated us in 1993.

We were meant to tough out our high school and college years without eachother.  God brought us together again in December 2000 through a mutual friend named Sean Parker.  For the first time since that basketball game at Friends Seminary, the butterflies were back. Despite the different paths we pursued while apart, they all led us to that cold winter night in the Bronx, when boy I loved as a child stepped out of his truck as the man I had dreamed of.