by: Ayla McDonald
Anita & Larry Taylor
“We met in high school. We’ve been together 43 years. We’ve worked together at Parkland for 19 years. In our marriage, working together as a team is pivotal and rewarding. So working together at Parkland came naturally. Being able to drive to work and have lunch together just “topped” it off. Words of wisdom on marriage is to be a role model. People are watching you and forming lasting opinions on love, commitment, and marriage. This is very important to us, especially for young people to see and is vital in the Black community. Marriage takes work, but the fruits of joy and peace that come from the work are priceless. Overall, it’s a dance and a journey that we wouldn’t want to spend with anyone else. The lyric in the infamous song titled “Fifty-Fifty Love” by Teddy Pendergrass explains it best, “It’s so good, good, loving somebody, and somebody loves you back.””
Luke Miller & Elliot Ping
“Luke and I met in CHE 101 with Mindy Tidrick in August 2015. It was day one, and I was fighting with one of those awful lockers. Because the doors to the lab lock automatically, Luke was holding it open and waiting for me. I looked at him over my shoulder and said,
“It usually doesn’t go like this…” and he shrugged and let me know that it was no problem. We started dating a couple of weeks later and were lab partners for most of that semester. Parkland was the backdrop for the first two years of our relationship. Half of the time it felt like the set for a sit com. Enter: Luke. Enter: Elliot. Proceed to be: incredibly awkward and hopelessly in love.
After spending two years at Parkland, we were both ready to continue with our degrees and moved together to Columbus, OH to attend The Ohio State University, me in the neuroscience program and him in the electrical engineering program. When I started at Parkland, I had no intention of finding my life partner, but we’ll be getting married this June. We joke that it’s all Mindy Tidrick’s fault for letting us work together that whole first semester.”
Nicoline & AJ
“I am from a town called Helsingør (Elsinore in English) in Denmark. I am currently in General Arts but I am hoping to transfer into Advertising at the University of Illinois (either in Champaign or in Chicago) after Parkland. AJ is from a small town in this area. He is a sophomore at the UIUC where he is majoring in statistics with a minor in both computer science and math. We met when I was an exchange student at his school back in 2014. We went to a small school so we ended up playing soccer on the same team. We started dating after going to homecoming together. When it was time for me to go home again, we decided to try to do long-distance, which we ended up doing up until August 2018 when I moved back here. I would advise couples who are forced to either do long-distance or break up to just go ahead and try. It is better to at least try than to be left with the question of ‘what if we could have made it?’. Even though long-distance really sucks, it also teaches you a lot of things such as communication and to appreciate the time you actually do get together even more.”
Dylan Chambers & Haylie Denzer
“We met in 7th grade and have been really close friends since. Parkland has played an important role in our relationship because we have been going to the same school together for 8 years and both of us really enjoy being around each other and even when we both have crazy schedules, we are comforted by the fact that we are a two-minute walk away from one another. Some relationship advice I would give from the man’s side of the relationship is always listen intently, be forever patient with one another, and the most important of them all is COMMUNICATE.”
