Tri-City couple celebrates 40 years. Their grandkids craft a colorful driveway memory
Some of the best ideas are passed down, from generation to generation.
Twenty-five years ago, an 11-year-old David Primus came up with what he thought was a brilliant idea to celebrate his parent’s 15th wedding anniversary: Draw out a colorful chalk message in their parents’ North Middleton, Penn., driveway.
He and his 14-year-old sister, Kelsey, got to work on their masterpiece while their parents were out at work one hot summer day.
The kids originally wanted to take their parents on a cruise ship, but they settled on something more “doable.”
The message — which read “Happy 15th Anniversary” in “broad, multi-colored chalk strokes” — caught their parents by surprise when they got home.
It also caught the attention of a passing reporter who memorialized the kids’ loving effort in a 1998 story in the local newspaper, The Sentinel.
So when Ken and Melanie Primus pulled up to their Richland, Wash., home after celebrating their 40th anniversary with wine tasting last Saturday, July 8, they were surprised to see a familiar message in their driveway.
Their grandchildren — in exquisite red, yellow, green and blue chalk — wrote “Happy 40th Anniversary.”
“They loved it,” David Primus told the Tri-City Herald. “They were really surprised and didn’t think we remembered.”
Kelsey Logan’s children — Timothy, 10, Anna, 7 and Sam, 5 — crafted the road-spanning magnum opus.
While David Primus’ 11-year-old daughter, Lilly, helped hatch the plan.
Ken and Melanie Primus, both 60, are high school sweethearts. They graduated from Pasco High School and have deep roots in the community.
Melanie Primus works as a teachers mentor for the Pasco School District and hopes to retire soon.
Ken Primus is the office director of World Relief Tri-Cities and a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army.
