Reneé Dobbins says when she opened the gift, she burst into tears.
“My friend, Barbara, had always held on to her issues of The Alabama Baptist for me,” she said. “It was my touch of home, my link to Alabama.”
And this Christmas, Barbara Wiginton gave Dobbins her very own subscription.
“It was definitely a highlight of Christmas for me,” Dobbins said.
The two have been good friends since they and their families joined Smoke Rise Baptist Church, Warrior, back in the 1970s when their kids were young. Through the years, they stayed close, even as they moved churches and Dobbins and her husband, Bill, moved to Foley, then to the Georgia mountains after their home in Foley flooded.
“When they would come over, Reneé would see The Alabama Baptist and read it,” Wiginton said. “I kind of picked up on that and would put several issues aside, and she would say, ‘Oh yay! I’m going to read this on the way home.’”
But then Dobbins would sometimes read them before she ever left, Wiginton joked.
Dobbins said she loved reconnecting with Alabama stories.
“I was reading about places and things I was familiar with,” she said. “It was just a welcome chance to read about things happening in my home state.”
The couples — four fast friends — have visited each other as often as they could through the years. They’ve also traveled together many times, and the wives took a 52-day trip out West after they retired.
At every stop, they took what Wiginton calls their “headshot” — a photo of the two of them in front of something to document the moment.
“We’ve done it at the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, any place we went,” she said.
‘I’m so excited’
They did the same thing with a copy of The Alabama Baptist this year at Christmas to document the gift Dobbins loved so much.
“We received it for years and years, and I’m so excited to get it again,” Dobbins said.
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