When Bill Faust saw the “girl in the red coat” in his college history class, little did he realize that 20 months later it would lead to a marriage that would create three children, last 44 years, and take them from Phoenix to Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City. The foundation of their story rests on the cards, notes, and letters they exchanged. It is the story of shared values, the joy of laughing together, and doing what it takes to keep love alive and a marriage last. It will make you laugh, make you cry and, as Bill illustrated in a short poem that was written after Pat died, to appreciate the daily opportunity that life brings to each of us. The poem is titled Today: I died a little bit today, One cell gone from here or there, One less tomorrow left to share, Today, was it worth dying for, Today?

William “Bill” A. Faust was born in a small mining town in upstate Pennsylvania. To older readers this must sound like a male version of the old soap opera, Our Gal Sunday, (younger readers Google it) and he did indeed find happiness in the West and Midwest. However, it is happiness found in real life, with all of its joys and conflicts, that this book celebrates. At the age of 12, suffering from asthma, he went to live with his aunt, Lovena Ohl, in Phoenix. Lovena was called the “doyenne of American Indian art” by Forbes Magazine. That expertise eventually evolved into today’s Faust-King Galleries. Bill graduated from Arizona State University in 1968 and after several career changes retired in 2002 from UMB Bank in Kansas City as a Senior Vice President and Investment Officer. He lives with his cat Misty in Cave Creek, Arizona.