User:Sail44

You never know when a day is going to change your life. Lonnie Story never would have expected stopping at a flower shop in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., on April 16, 2003 would change his. It was a Wednesday, and he was down in the dumps. He was 39 years old, a single parent raising a teenage son in nearby Ormond Beach. He had opened a clinic to offer legal advice. The dregs of life had bummed him out.

His sister was battling cancer, so he stopped to buy her flowers at the Six Sisters Florist. When the 76-year-old woman in the shop spoke to him, he noticed her accent. He thought she might be German. As it turned out, she was from Luxembourg.

"She started telling stories," he said. "I didn't have anything else to do or anywhere else to go. Considering the mood I was in, a flower shop was a nice place to disappear."

Her name was Anni Adams and her tales so amazing he began wondering if he needed to shake a bottle of truth serum onto her flower petals.

Here was a World War II bride claiming to have danced with Guy Lombardo, dined with Alan Shepherd, appeared on the Jack Paar Show, brushed elbows with Edwin Murrow and once had Henry Ford II stop on the streets of New York to help her fix her broken-down car.

Later, when he told someone about meeting Anni, the friend said: "Sounds like a female Forest Gump."

Story had spent several years as a paralegal assistant in Florida, but had always believed writing was his true calling in life. When he attended Macon's Cochran Field Academy (now Central Fellowship) in the mid-1970s, he won a state literary contest.

Besides, is there a more appropriate name for a writer named Story?

Combining his paralegal interviewing experience with his writing skills, he had considered starting a business to assist people in writing their autobiographies.

"I thought I had found a niche, kind of a 'Biographies R Us,' " he said. "Anni was going to be my guinea pig."

He handed her a business card, and she called him a week later. But she wasn't too enthused about having to pay to have her life story published.

By then, Story was so intrigued by her story he wasn't willing to let it go.

You just talk, he told her, and I'll write. No obligation. This is a journey we'll make together.

Now, less than a year later, a book has been born. "The Meeting of Anni Adams: The Butterfly of Luxembourg" is the result of the unlikely literary union between two very different people from two very different backgrounds.

Story, a graduate of Southwest High School and an Army vet, will return to his hometown on Friday for a signing at Books-a-Million at Eisenhower Parkway from 6-8 p.m.

His dream is one day the whole world will know the story of Anni Adams.

At times, it seemed as if Anni's story would write itself. Other times, he wondered if he had drifted backstage into the middle of some fantasy.

"I couldn't believe some of the things she was telling me, but I didn't want to insult her," he said. "When she could tell I wasn't buying it, she would start pulling out pictures and newspaper articles. She was a treasure of information."

They began meeting on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Sometimes she would fix dinner, and he would take notes. He began to think of her as a butterfly, slowly coming out of her cocoon.

"I had a lot of things bottled up," Anni said. "It felt good to have somebody listening. I learned to trust him."

After two months, Story could hardly wait to sit down and write each day. "It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences," he said. "I had met somebody with an incredible life story, and nobody else knew about it."

They traveled to her native Luxembourg, where she had met her late husband, Charlie, in 1945. Charlie was an American soldier in Gen. George Patton's Third Army that liberated the country from Nazi occupation.

Anni recently traveled with Story to Macon to meet some of his family and friends. He took her to where he grew up on Griffin Road, gathering pecans every fall to make enough money to go to the Georgia State Fair.

He calls their book the story of a "simple woman" that will "make you laugh, dance, sing and cry." Getting it into print was no easy matter. "You could wallpaper the planet with the rejection slips," said Story.

Both he and Anni later took out personal loans to have the book published.

"I've put my whole life into it," he said.

A 'Story' book ending? Well, the butterfly has wings...