It was an ordinary day like so many others. She made her way to work and started it with a huge smile. But as the day went on, she got a surprise visitor. In one split second, she would be transported back to 1959 and the smile she started her day off with would quickly be wiped away…Click Here To Continue Reading>> …Click Here To Continue Reading>>
UPBRINGING
Renate Stumpf, a German native, had a strict upbringing. At only 18 years old her parents didn’t have enough money to send her to college, so she needed to find a job to help them out — and she did. Renate found a job at an army base in Germany in the late 1950s but, little did she know, she wouldn’t be staying in Germany for long.
KITCHEN WORKER
There at the army base, she met the love of her life — or so she thought. Renate worked in the army base kitchen preparing and serving food for the soldiers. But one day, a man was mesmerized by Renate and her cooking. This was just the beginning of their story.
LOVE AT FIRST MEAL
Renate was working in the kitchen that day when a young soldier approached her. This young man was Louis Demetriades, who was stationed at the same base Renate was in. Both of them were 18, so they had a lot in common, and this sparked massive chemistry between them. But it was not until Louis asked Renate to make him a burger that he fell in love.
THE 60’S
“The first time I ever saw him, he asked me if I could fix him a hamburger. He liked who he saw, so he asked to go help me out in the kitchen.” Renate told ABC news. These two lovebirds quickly married. But then, Louis got an offer to work in the U.S that he could not, and would not, refuse.
PERFECT FAMILY
Subsequently, both Renate and Louis moved to the United States and began a family. Love kept blossoming for them, but they would still have hardships they would have to endure in the future. They integrated themselves pretty well into America, but still, Renate couldn’t handle the language barrier.
TROUBLES
Renate had never studied English, and it was very hard for her to communicate in the language and understand her surroundings easily. That is where things started going south for the couple. “We had little financial support, I didn’t know anything, and I could barely speak English,” Renate told ABC News. “We started arguing about every little thing.”
PARTING WAYS
In the years that followed, Louis and Renate decided to get a divorce. This decision was not an easy one but they knew it was the right one, for both of them. They moved on with their lives but still, Louis could not forget Renate so easily. Louis married and relocated to Memphis, Tennessee.
SENSING SOMEONE THERE
Renate also remarried and lived happily with her new husband. But even though Renate and Louis shared children, they weren’t in contact whatsoever. 40 years had passed, but Louis had some unfinished business he needed to settle with his old flame. Renate went to work that day, like any other. But while she was speaking to a customer, she sensed someone behind her.
MIXED FEELINGS
Renate slowly turned around and saw Louis standing there, and she recognized him instantly. Emotions washed over her like a tidal wave. At first, she felt surprised, and then angry. Then she felt overwhelming confusion that was quickly replaced with curiosity. What could Louis want from her after all this time? And how had he found her?
CUNNING PLAN
You see, Louis had secretly contacted Renate’s daughter on Facebook. Her daughter had warned him that Renate may not react well to his plan, but still gave him all the information he needed. Renate had no idea all of this was happening. But once she turned around and saw him, she started shaking.
GHOST FROM THE PAST
At first, Renate had thought nothing of seeing her children approach her. Her kids would come to say “hi” from time to time while she was working, but when she turned and saw her ex-husband standing behind her, she knew in her heart that Louis and her own children had set her up.
VISITOR
Renate could not believe what she was seeing. She had not seen Louis in 43 years! And there he was, standing right in front of her. But what did he want from her after being apart for so long? And more importantly, did Renate even want to see him? Then, she saw the sign he was holding in his hands, and it all made sense.
PERFECTLY PLANNED
Louis had wanted that day to be more than special; he had planned everything. He had talked to Renate’s employer and the people she worked with, and let them in on his plan. He even had one of Renate’s daughters capture everything on camera. But that was not all.
THE SIGN
Louis was holding a sign. But first, as their eyes locked, he said: “Hey good looking,” and put the sign up so she could read it. As soon as she did, Renate immediately started to cry. The sign read: “Happy Valentine’s Day!” but that wasn’t all. Renate continued to read, and then broke down.
DISBELIEF
“Will you marry me?” was scrawled at the bottom of Louis’ sign. Renate was at a loss for words, but then she went in for a hug. The pair embraced and it was clear to see that the love that there once was had never left these two. Still, Louis was looking for an answer to his question on the sign, but Renate’s answer was not exactly what he had expected. READ FULL STORY HERE>>>CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING>>>
YES, BUT…
“No,” Renate jokingly responded, before adding, “Yes, but not today!” Renate gasped. Even though Louis was hoping for a “yes”, he was ok with her answer and they both chuckled. But still, she went on to explain why she had decided to decline Louis’ proposal on the spot… for now.
THOUGHTS
“43 years is a long time, and to say ‘yes’ right away, I’m gonna have to test him a little bit first!” she revealed. Even though Renate and Louis’ spouses had long since passed on, it was still not an easy decision — after all, the couple had failed to make things work the first time around. But perhaps the pair have some new insights into their relationship now that 43 years have passed.
IT PAID OFF
“I will marry him, though, because he’s a good man,” Renate admitted. Their marriage had been tricky, and full of ups and downs, so Renate was wise to take everything slow. Hopefully, after 43 years, the pair can work out their differences. But why did Louis plan everything as he did?
LOUIS’ PLAN
He wanted her to share this day with her friends and loved ones. Renate is an incredibly social woman and he knew that this would not only be a shock to her but also, all of her friends would be there too. He wanted to declare his love for Renate among all the people she cherished the most.
A RISK
“Why did I come to Walmart to propose to my wife again?” Louis said in an interview. “It’s because she has so many friends here, and I knew she would like to share that with them,” he explained. But how did he know his proposal would be well-received? It was a big risk to pop the question in such a public place!
ON THE NEWS
The video of Louis’ surprise proposal to the woman he hadn’t seen in over 40 years became an internet sensation, with the original video garnering over 600,000 views. soon, local news channels snapped up the story, too. People just can’t get over such a surprising and heartwarming reunion, and all were enamored by the 75-year-old love story.
REACTIONS
As the story went viral, people couldn’t help but comment on what they thought about this incredible story. Some commenters even knew Renate! “This makes you feel great,” one lady said. “[Renate’s] my favorite cashier too!”
HAPPY FOR THEM
Another woman commented; “I’ve known Renate for many years and her family, [and] she is by far the sweetest lady around, I love how she is, and I’m happy for her. She is amazing.” Renate is obviously well-loved by her colleagues and clients at Walmart, but what did people have to say about Louis’ surprise?
ABOUT TIME
Some commenters were ecstatic for the reunited lovebirds: “It took him 43 years to figure out that he let a diamond go the first time around? Good for them!” and another: “Don’t wait too long, you are not spring chickens!” But not all comments were positive, and some cautioned Renate to be careful about her decision.
CAUTIONARY ADVICE
One woman wrote: “WOW!!!. It only took 43 yrs to wake up. Remember why you divorced the first time. CAUTION take your time when making your decision.” And another: “Remember, you divorced for a reason…..think this decision through.” But Renate wasn’t about to let anyone sway her, she knew what she needed to do.
DESTINY
Even after 43 years of not knowing anything about each other, these two connected and made their love spark again. They had seen each other once before this surprise encounter, and they knew right there and then. “When we saw each other again last December, we knew right then we still loved each other for sure,” Renate told ABC News. “That love has never passed.”
HAPPY COUPLE
Renate and Louis became a couple again, and this time they knew they had to do things the right way. First, Renate wanted to take it slow. “There’s no rush at my age,” she told ABC News. “God put us together again, and it couldn’t be any other way after all these years.”
LOVE CONQUERS ALL
She insisted that they are in no way rushing to be married, but they want to enjoy every minute as a happy couple together. It just goes to show you that if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be — even after more than 40 years have passed! The spark of one’s first love is never so easily forgotten.
DETERMINATION
Louis’ determination and undying love for his first wife prompted him to plan carefully, and his actions were not without risk. He drove all the way from Tennessee to the Walmart where Renate was working to ensure that he gave her the Valentine’s surprise of a lifetime, and he wasn’t even sure if she would want to see him again after 43 years! What do you think of Louis’ gutsy proposal?
Scientists from Norway, Sweden, Germany, and the UK are warning us about some serious problems happening in the ocean because of how fast our planet is heating up. They studied a major ocean current called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC for short.
This current acts like a giant conveyor belt, moving warm and cold water around the Atlantic Ocean. It helps keep the climate balanced, especially in the Northern parts of the world like North America and Europe.
What the scientists found is worrying. There’s another ocean current up in the Arctic called the Beaufort Gyre. Normally, this gyre spins around and stores a lot of freshwater that comes from melting sea ice and rivers. But because the planet is getting hotter, this gyre is changing…Click Here To Continue Reading>> …Click Here To Continue Reading>>
The warmer air and less sea ice are making it weaker. If the Beaufort Gyre stops working the way it’s supposed to, all that freshwater it’s been holding could suddenly pour into the North Atlantic Ocean.
That might not sound like a big deal, but it could actually mess up the AMOC. This ocean system depends on a mix of salty and cold water to keep moving. If too much freshwater gets into it, the balance could be thrown off. If the AMOC slows down a lot or even collapses, it could cause serious and possibly permanent changes in our weather.
For example, sea levels could rise quickly along the East Coast of the U.S. There could be more intense storms. Rainy seasons and dry seasons in places like the Amazon might switch around.
Some places could get much colder while others get warmer. It could be like a shift back toward ice age conditions in some parts of the world. These are what scientists call “tipping points”moments when change happens so fast and so big that we can’t easily go back. READ FULL STORY HERE>>>CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING>>>
The scary part is that even under moderate levels of pollution—like a “middle of the road” scenario where we don’t make big changes—this future still looks likely. Most models show that the Beaufort Gyre will shrink and stop holding freshwater as the Earth keeps warming.
There is one small bright spot. Another study found that the AMOC hasn’t really slowed down in the last 60 years. That’s a good sign, and it means the system might be stronger than some people thought.
But most scientists still believe that if we keep sending a lot of heat-trapping gases into the air from things like coal, oil, and gas, the AMOC will eventually get weaker and collapse. It’s not a question of if, but when.
The only way to prevent this is to seriously cut back on the pollution we’re putting into the air. That means switching from dirty energy, like fossil fuels, to clean energy like wind and solar. People can help at home too.
Things like using electric stoves instead of gas ones, adding solar panels to rooftops, and upgrading heating systems to more efficient ones like heat pumps can lower energy use and reduce pollution.
Even small changes matter. The more we do now, the better chance we have of protecting the ocean, the climate, and life as we know it.
A concerned father woke with a feeling that he should check on his daughter in her bedroom down the hall. It was after 3 a.m. when he walked into her room, and he didn’t expect to happen on the scene that he found. Now, the dad is sitting in prison.
When Ben Batterham put his little girl to bed on Saturday night, he didn’t think he would wake to a nightmare just hours later. Suddenly alert at 3:30 in the morning, he walked to his daughter’s bedroom.
According to Yahoo News, the 33-year-old Australian father didn’t ask questions. His protective parental instinct instantly took over, and he grabbed the 34-year-old intruder, identified as Ricky Slater, with his bare hands, beating him to a bloody pulp.
Batterham dragged the pervert out of his daughter’s room in a headlock and into the street to detain him until police arrived. Once cops got there, Slater’s neck was snapped in half and he was unconscious.
The intruder was transported to the hospital where he died the following morning, after being removed from life support. Despite getting what he deserved when he entered a child’s bedroom with bad intentions, Batterham is paying a dear price for protecting his daughter.
The courageous father was initially charged with recklessly causing grievous bodily harm, but that has since been upgraded to murder since Slater’s death. The intruder’s family is coming to their degenerate son’s defense, blaming Slater’s bad actions on Batterham, claiming he was a good guy and loving father, who didn’t deserve to die.
Seeking justice for her now three fatherless grandchildren, Slater’s mother, Beryl Dickson, is pushing the court to not be kind on Batterham. “They’ve lost their father, their beautiful father that they haven’t seen for years because he was in jail, which has nothing to do with this case,” Dickson told ABC News. “Just to think those little kids are going to grow up without a dad now.”
Perhaps this mother should have stopped making excuses for her son’s horrible decisions years before it got to this point. If she had, he could have been a father to his children. It’s not the victim’s fault the criminal was killed in committing a crime, that’s a risk he faced when he chose to creep on a little girl, and it’s the father’s right to protect her.
Considering Slater’s pedophile tendencies, his kids are probably better off without him. By Dickson’s own admission, her son’s children didn’t even know their father since he’s always chosen crime over them. Now, because of him, a little girl won’t get to know her dad either, since he’s in prison for protecting her.
Not everyone sees it the same as Slater’s family and the law that’s earned him a criminal charge. A petition has been started to free Batterham from murder charges, since he was just doing what any good parent would have. Someone wasn’t going to make it out of that bedroom unharmed, and this dad didn’t allow that to be his daughter.
Only in a place like Australia, that abhors gun rights and bans people from owning them, would a victim be made the criminal for acting on his human right to protection.
Slater’s family shouldn’t be given a soap box to stand on and profess their sob story about their son either. His children are also victims because of their own father, and their grandmother is partly to blame, not Batterham.
When a Florida mom hired a nanny to help care for her son, she never thought the decision would make her a grandma. After realizing the nanny had given birth to her 11-year-old’s baby, the distraught mother says she “threw up.” Five years later, the young father decided to speak out.
Chris McBride was only 11 years old when his family’s live-in nanny changed the Florida boy’s life forever. Marissa Mowry, then 22, was hired by Chris’s mom Nadean Campbell to care for the child in their Hillsborough County home. Instead, the Port Richey woman sexually assaulted the 11-year-old boy and even gave birth to his baby.
Mowry was recommended by Nadean’s sister-in-law, who had also employed her. Mowry moved in with the family, and Nadean came to think of her as a daughter. But, behind closed doors, Mowry was grooming young Chris. “It was a game called ‘are you nervous,’ and the object of that game was she’d place her hands somewhere on my body and I’d say if I was nervous or not and things escalated from there,” a 17-year-old Chris told Inside Edition…Click Here To Continue Reading>> …Click Here To Continue Reading>>
The Abuse:After the sexual abuse began, Chris said it continued to happen almost every night. It didn’t stop until he was 14 years old, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “She said that she loved me.
She said that she wanted to date, but she couldn’t let anyone know because it was obviously wrong,” Chris explained. “You have to lie or else I’m gonna have to go away,” he said Mowry told him. Then came the news that she was pregnant. “I was a little bit freaked because I was confused,” Chris recalled.
Mowry gave birth to a baby boy named Bentley as she continued to live with the family, telling Chris’s mother that another man — her boyfriend — was her child’s father. Chris eventually surmised the courage to tell his mother the truth, and Nadean notified the authorities.
A DNA test confirmed that Chris was Bentley’s father. “When the results came back, I went and threw up,” Nadean admitted, saying she felt like a failure. “How did I let this woman manipulate me and my family in such a way that she could do this and I was blind to it?”
Mowry’s Arrest & Conviction:Nearly three years after giving birth to the boy’s child, Marissa Mowry was arrested outside the Busch Gardens theme park, where she was working as a food attendant, according to NY Post.
She was charged with multiple counts of sexual battery and faced life in prison. Initially, she told detectives Chris McBride had forced himself on her. But, in a phone call with the boy, which investigators recorded, she admitted that wasn’t true. READ FULL STORY HERE>>>CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING>>>
With the evidence stacked against her, Marissa Mowry took a plea deal. At 28 years old, five years after giving birth to Chris’s baby, she was sentenced. A 17-year-old Chris sat in a courtroom to watch as she was handed 20 years in prison for what she did to him, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Upon her release, she will have to complete 10 years of probation and will need to register as a sex offender, meaning she will spend the rest of her life adhering to a series of strict conditions.
Mowry — Victim vs. Predator:According to court records, Marissa Mowry now has three children. In court, her public defender pointed to the former nanny’s troubled past, which included an abusive childhood, absent parents, being homeless, and only receiving her high school diploma while in jail, but Nadean Campbell said it was no excuse for the damage she caused, changing the course of Chris McBride’s entire life.
Chris’s mom says Mowry is a predator who manipulated her family and stole Chris’s innocence. “We’re talking about a child that was 11,” Nadean said. “Not even a teenager. Eleven.” Nadean is now urging other parents to be vigilant, to start digging when something doesn’t seem right, and not to assume that women won’t victimize children, particularly those entrusted with protecting them. “We don’t think about females being predators, usually,” Nadean explained. “I didn’t — and it cost me.” And, it cost Chris too — but it wasn’t all bad.
Chris McBride’s Life As A 17-Year-Old Dad With A 5-Year-Old Son:Nadean remembers the child her son once was and her memories of a boy in a kiddie pool, riding dirt bikes, and playing with Lego blocks. Chris is now a teenager raising a 5-year-old son.
He takes Bentley to school every morning, then goes to school himself. Rather than hanging out with friends, he plays with his son in their backyard when he gets home. “Who wants to date a 17-year-old who has a 5-year-old?” Nadean asked, pointing out one of many obstacles Chris faces. “It has not ruined his life, but it’s changed his life.”
Although being a father has put limits on what Chris can do, he’s trying to be the best dad he can be. The 17-year-old father has the support of his mother, and 5-year-old Bently says he as “the best daddy!” Nadean agrees, saying, Chis “has turned into one of the most amazing dads you’ll ever meet.”
Chris admits it’s not easy being a teen dad and missing out on his own childhood, but he’s determined to turn something so negative into something positive by being there for and enjoying his son. Regardless of his circumstances, he’s a success story.