Talk about making key connections.

At last year’s Business to Business Trade Show, Michelle Lefebvre met Justin Davis. Something more than just pleasantries must have been exchanged because 12 months later, Davis proposed to Lefebvre. At this year’s trade show.

Friends said the bride-to-be seemed a little overwhelmed when her beau presented her with flowers and an engagement ring. But she said yes, and the good news was proclaimed from the trade show stage by chamber President Chip Morrison.

Paul Badeau, the trade show organizer at the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council, was cheered by the news. Lefebvre worked at the growth council and helped organize many trade shows before leaving for a job at Central Maine Community College. Davis is a local chiropractor.

“Who would have guessed this could come out of a trade show?” Badeau said with a laugh. “Everyone wishes them the best.”

– Carol Coultas

Cool troopers

A breeze of cool air is headed to Maine’s soldiers in Iraq.

The Maine State Troopers Association plans to buy 25 air conditioners to be used in the tents and shelters of the Iraqi desert.

They should be welcome. Returning soldiers have reported temperatures reaching 160 degrees.

Perhaps it’s just a dry heat, but so is a forest fire.

The air conditioners will be sent to Iraq on Monday by Home Depot, which has created a special nationwide program for the shipments at a cost of $78.

The gift, to be sent to the 133rd Engineer Battalion of the Maine Army National Guard, is being funded by the charity arm of the troopers’ union.

– Daniel Hartill

Pitts on fathers

With tomorrow being Father’s Day, comments that syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts offered during his visit to Lewiston last month came to mind. Pitts spoke about how too many children are growing up without fathers, how the role of father needs to be better valued.

Many men think their contribution is met if they’re paying the bills. “One guy told me, Hey, my kid always had Pampers.’ I said, OK, but there’s a little bit more to it,'” Pitts said.

There’s not enough understanding of the value of having a father in the house, he added. “One young man I interviewed for a book I wrote said, You sleep better with your dad in the house.’ Think about that. A father secures a house. We’ve bought into this thing that says men and women are the same. They’re not. Men and women are equal, but not the same.”

There are things that mothers bring to the home that men cannot duplicate, and there are things that men bring to the home that women cannot duplicate.

Pitts offered one example. In a few years a boy will come to his home looking to date his daughter.

“It’s my sacred job as a father to take that boy into a quiet room, to clean my fingernails with a hunting knife, and explain to him the hour by which I expect my daughter to be home.”

It made us laugh, and think.

– Bonnie Washuk