Bill and Rusty Bergman

Hello again from Bill and Rusty!

It is hard to believe that another year has flown by.

Rusty and I continue to enjoy our travels as traveling has become a large part of our retirement activities. Of course, even in retirement, working has also remained a steady factor.

In March we traveled to Fort Lauderdale to start our Spring Cruise with our cruising friends, with whom we try to travel every year. That 10 day cruise was back to the Caribbean with several new ports of call for us. They were Saint Kitts and Dominica. We still enjoy our days at sea relaxing around the spa pool. The food was also excellent.

The big cruise trip this year was a 13 day cruise in the Mediterranean. This was the second time we sailed that magnificent sea. We started by flying to Barcelona Spain where we stayed several days prior to the cruise departure. This trip we sailed with friends from South Carolina that we met on the last cruise to the Med. They are great people and good traveling companions. Barcelona is a wonderful city; beautiful, exciting and full of wonderful architecture….fun to walk around and safe as well. We got our overview of Barcelona by riding the “Hop on-Hop off” tour bus; it is a super way to do that.

We departed on Rusty’s birthday and traveled to Villefranche, where we took a tour to Monaco and Monte Carlo. I did get in the casino but did not gamble. We saw the church where Princess Grace was married and is buried. Then off to Livorno where our tour was to a Tuscany vineyard for lunch and wine tasting. A gorgeous area and a great tour. From there we cruised to Citicavecchia, which is the port serving Rome. We acted as tour guides and took our friends into Rome by train and back. It is about an hour trip each way.

Once in Rome we walked to the Spanish Steps and Trevi fountain, having lunch at the Bergman family favorite restaurant in Rome: “L’Archetto.” Rusty enjoyed shopping for purses. From Citicavecchia, we sailed to Piraeus Greece for a quick tour to the Acropolis in Athens. Beautiful! From there to Kusadasi Turkey where we took a tour to Ephesus, a marvelous ancient Roman City. Next was Santorini Greece which was our favorite stop on this cruise. Stunning and beautiful blue roofed white washed buildings everywhere. Very colorful.

We enjoyed a great bottle of wine with a view overlooking the harbor. From there we sailed back to Naples where we toured Herculaneum, another victim of the volcano Vesuvius. This town was buried in mud rather than ash and therefore was exceptionally well preserved. From Naples we cruised back to Barcelona for the flight home. A GREAT cruise.

Later that summer we traveled West by car to visit Bryan, Leigh, Anna and Theo going by way of several new places to visit in the US. We went to Galena, Illinois to start, a cute little town. Then on to Sioux Falls which has a great Falls River Park to see. From there we visited the Corn Palace and then off to Wall, SD where we stopped at Wall Drug, a nationally known drug store. From there it was a short trip to see Mount Rushmore, a wonderful place. We did the Needles Highway circuit and the towns of Deadwood and XXX. Then on to see Devils Tower in Wyoming, finally arriving in Boulder, where we stayed for 12 days. This visit allowed Bryan and Leigh to go to Iceland for a short vacation.

We had a wonderful family Thanksgiving, gathering together all three grandchildren, Holly, Tom, Leigh and Bryan at Bryan’s home in Boulder, the first Thanksgiving together for many, many years. That was a most memorable Thanksgiving with much to be thankful for!

We have committed to our next adventure: a 23 day land tour of Australia and New Zealand, leaving March 8th, 2011; but more on that next newsletter. Our love and best wishes for continued health and happiness to all the Bergman families.




Bill and Rusty

Bill and Rusty Bergman Family

Greetings Once Again from 5157 Oak Tree Drive in Kettering! Doesn’t it seem as though the time passes by all too quickly??? That said we do like this means of keeping current with all the happening of the Bergman Family Tree and all its branches.

We are Happily Enjoying the Excitement of Grandparenthood! Anna, Theo and Zachary are such wonderful grandchildren. We are enjoying helping them learn and grow while having lots of fun every time we see them! Our visits to Boulder are enhanced by Anna and Theo’s experiences and adventures. Zachary is growing so quickly and starting to talk including saying Gama and Gapa, which is close enough for us. So much fun!

Hard to believe but I have been retired Almost 3 years already! Although we staying very busy doing the things important to us, such as getting garage time (workshop), clock repair, woodworking, playing some golf and of course traveling. I am still working doing commercial plan review for the Building Departments of the Cities of Eaton, Fairborn and Vandalia. Not much Architectural Design going on at this time but the plan review keeps us busy enough.

Rusty continues enjoying working for KBEC one day a week, occasionally more to help out.

Rusty and I are continuing to volunteer for the Victoria Theatre Association as ushers for the live theatre productions that go on at several venues in Dayton. We really like seeing live theatre in exchange for our time.


We are maintaining our interest in travel! Last November we enjoyed 3 days in Rome prior to leaving on a 12 night cruise of the Mediterranean. We visited the Cinque Terra; Florence and Pisa; Sicily; beautiful and sensuous Venice; Naples and Pompeii (didn’t spend near enough time here); did the Amalfi Coast drive that had 1200 hairpin turns; and enjoyed Split and Dubrovnik Croatia. During that cruise we met a super nice couple from North Carolina with whom we are planning our next cruise, which will be another 12 night cruise around the Baltics, with a two day pre-stay in Amsterdam.

Rusty and I enjoyed a quick trip to Michigan to do some sightseeing and for me to play golf. The courses were beautiful and the weather wonderful.

In February of 2009, we celebrated our 44th wedding anniversary by enjoying another cruise, this time to the Western Caribbean, leaving on my birthday. We were aboard the Celebrity cruise ship Constellation. Always a great time with our cruising buddies! Rusty and I had great fun experiencing our first taste of whitewater rafting, which was a blast doing levels 1 and 2 in Costa Rica. We also got to the Grand Caymans; Cartahenga, Columbia; Limon, Panama; and Cozumel, Mexico. We drove to Fort Lauderdale from where the cruise started and returned.

This April we did the Masters Golf Tournament! We went with our good friends Ron and Linda Armstrong; we had tickets for Tuesday practice day. On the way down we also visited Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg; drove a portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway; and visited the beautiful Biltmore House. The Augusta National Golf Course is simply breathtaking with beauty at every turn. We had fun walking the course and being so close to the pro players.

In May we went to Hilton Head! We went to meet with Bryan and Leigh (Leigh was there as a Doctor Presenter for Continuing Education purposes). Bryan and I played two golf courses at Palmetto Dunes; the ones designed by Robert Trent Jones and George Fazio. Rusty and Leigh had a couple great Spa experiences. Lots of great food and good times together! The Hilton Oceanfront Resort was an absolutely wonderful experience for us all.

Several trips to Colorado were also part of our year. It is always fun to visit with Bryan and Leigh and get our chance to spoil Anna and Theo. Wonderful Times!! We are enjoying this time in our lives and feel truly blessed.

Our love to all,
Bill and Rusty

Bill & Rusty Bergman

Hello to everyone from 5157 Oak Tree Drive in Kettering! It is hard to believe another year has flown by, as they seem to go all too quickly! We do enjoy taking our annual turn to tell of our adventures!

We have had a wonderful year as new Grandparents! Holly and Bryan have added to the family tree with three super grandchildren. Zachary Ryan Underwood arrived on August 18th of 2007 and just passed 6 months of age. He is sitting up and seems to enjoy the world around him. Anna and Theo arrived in Boulder on April 20th and are marvelously adapting to their new home and family.

It is such a joy to watch the grandchildren learn and grow. They are all having fun and learning lots every day! We are trying hard not to spoil them all silly, but hey! That’s what grandparents are supposed to do!

I am learning to fully enjoy retirement! The important thing is to stay busy doing the things that you like that are MOST important, such as woodworking, travel, playing golf, traveling, did I say playing golf?? I still do some “work” of both plan review for several local Building Departments along with Architectural Design for selected projects. I just finished a new automotive dealership for Bill Marine Honda in Springfield that is now under construction.

Rusty enjoys being a “resource” for her former department by working a couple days a week based upon her own schedule. This approach keeps her busy doing some outside work, but still allows her to do other things she likes.

Rusty and I are continuing to volunteer for the Victoria Theatre Association as ushers for the live theatre productions that go on at several venues in Dayton. We really like seeing live theatre in exchange for our time. We also joined the Cincinnati Pops and have enjoyed the many varied shows down at Music Hall.

We are maintaining our interest in travel, having just returned from an 8-day adventure in Egypt. Sometimes it was surreal to know that we were actually cruising on the historic Nile River….sightseeing the Great Pyramids in the Giza….. riding a camel on your birthday….. having an Egyptian Bouzouki band play Happy Birthday……….seeing the temples of Ancient Times……visiting the tombs of famous Egyptian Pharaohs and Queens…..seeing the celebrated Sphinx…….getting a first hand look at the actual glorious treasures found in the tomb of King Tut! While the schedule was very hectic we did pack an awful lot of Egypt in those 8 days! We met many new fellow adventurers! In many ways it was a once in a lifetime trip. 
 

In February of 2007, we celebrated my birthday and our wedding anniversary by enjoying a 7 day cruise to the Southern Caribbean aboard the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Adventure of the Seas. A giant monster of a ship that was surprisingly easy to navigate. We saw the new ports of Aruba and Curacao and re-visited the familiar ones of San Juan, Saint Maarten and Saint Thomas. Always a great time with our cruising buddies! Ruthie and I got to ride Segways in St.Maarten, which were a blast.

Last July, Alaska beckoned and we answered. We had a busy adventure with Princess Cruise lines starting with a 4-day land tour, which included two train rides via the well-known vista dome railcars. We stayed in Princess Lodges; the best being the lodge at Denali National Park, where we were fortunate enough to see Mt. McKinley clear of clouds….a magnificent sight. We also went whale watching and saw multiple pods of Killer Whales (Orcas), which can be a rare sighting event. We then took the train down to the dock where we boarded the Coral Princess and sailed down to Vancouver, Canada via Glacier Bay, Skagway, Juneau and Ketchikan. We finished the trip with several extra days in Vancouver including a trip via ferry to Victoria and the beautiful Buchart Gardens.

Several trips to Colorado were also part of our year. Ruthie went out by herself to help Bryan and Leigh get rebalanced in their work/parenting arrangements before Montessori school got underway in Boulder. We also went out in early December to celebrate Christmas together. We enjoyed being part of Anna and Theo’s first American Christmas. Wonderful Times!!

Well, that is it for now,

Our love to all,

Bill and Rusty

Bill and Rusty Bergman

Greetings to everyone once again from Kettering! It is hard to believe another year has flown by, as they seem to go all too quickly! It is fun to take our turn to tell our stories and recount our year in the Newsletter!
The BIG NEWS for us this year is: We are becoming Grandparents!! That news is wonderful for us and we are looking forward to these events. I’ll let Holly and Bryan tell their own stories of this super news, but lets just say……that Grandma and Grandpa are ecstatic!

It finally happened as we scheduled! I retired from Montgomery County on July 31st, 2006. (Rusty and Holly decorated the room for the farewell party with 'Say Goodbye to Bill' ads that Rusty and collected from the newspaper a few years earlier.) Rusty and I are finding we really like being retired and are enjoying ourselves more and more every day. The important thing is to stay busy doing the things that you like that are important to you.

Rusty still maintains herself as a “resource” to her former department at Kettering Breast Evaluation Center by working a couple days a week based upon her own schedule. She likes that approach to keeping busy doing some outside work.

My little business “ArchitecturePlus” is doing well with plenty enough work to stay busy and to add a little extra income. I am currently the contract Plans Examiner for the City of Eaton, which includes all of Preble County, looking at permit documents for all commercial work. I also am doing architectural design work on a more limited basis for a varied group of projects around the area.

Rusty and I decided to volunteer for the Victoria Theatre Association working as ushers for the live theatre productions that go on at several venues in Dayton. We recently ushered (and got to see for free) the play “AIDA” at the Schuster, and have ushered many other performances as well. We find that it is a fun thing to do and allows us to see live theatre in exchange for our time. A good deal for us.

This has been another year of exciting travel for us. In September of 2006 we celebrated our retirements by taking a fifteen-day guided tour of China. We traveled to Beijing, Xian, Shanghai, Suzhou, Guilin, and Hong Kong. These were thoroughly enjoyable cities many of which were full of smog!! An amazing amount of construction was seen in every city as well. We visited Tian’anmen Square and the Forbidden City; had a rickshaw ride through the Hutong area of Beijing; climbed The Great Wall of China; saw and enjoyed the Terra Cotta Soldiers; took a four-hour river cruise down the beautiful Li River; ballroom danced with the morning exercise groups of Chinese people at several cities; enjoyed the wonderful French Concession area of Shanghai (where our group of traveling American friends had dinner in a German restaurant listening to a Chinese singer doing County/Western songs!!); went up to the observation deck of the 1560 foot tall famous Oriental Pearl Tower; saw the great harbor of Hong Kong where Rusty went up the tram to Victoria Peak ; Rusty had a sampan ride in Hong Kong harbor (I got sick in Hong Kong and missed both); saw many wonderful gardens and fantastic new and ancient Chinese Architecture; and ate way too much Chinese Food! I am currently working on creation of an hour-long digital movie of this truly memorable trip!

A week after returning from China, Rusty and I drove to Colorado to visit Bryan and Leigh in Boulder. We used their condo at Silverthorne as a “home base” to also drive to visit our scenic national parks including Colorado National Monument; then off to Utah to see Arches and Canyonlands. We now have our National Parks Senior Passes that are a great bargain since they only cost $10.00 and are good for the rest of our lives! Bryan and I played golf at Fossil Trace, which is a new and exciting course in Boulder. We also had a surprise snowfall 5 inches deep on October 17th! As usual, Bryan and Leigh are wonderful hosts who created another memorable visit!

Our spring cruise this year is a 7-day cruise to the Southern Caribbean, visiting Aruba; Curacao; St. Maarten; and St. Thomas that sails in and out of San Juan, Puerto Rico and leaves on February 25. Two new ports of call creating new excitement for us!

On March 6, I will be have hip replacement surgery for my old right hip, which has been badly visited by Mr. Arthur Itis, once again!!

Well, that is it for now,
Our love to all,
Bill and Rusty