Five friends; 50 years of birthday celebrations

Before the birthdays, there was friendship. And now after 50 years of warm wishes, the birthdays and the friendship remain at the heart of their story.

If you dine out regularly, chances are you’ve seen them around metro Atlanta, most recently at Bugaboo Creek Steak House in Conyers, where Joyce Woodburn and Hazel Cawthon live now.

For a half-century, the four friends have met four times a year to celebrate one another's birthdays. They've also added some members, so at its peak the birthday bunch sometimes met as often as seven times a year. Sometimes they even attended church together or went bowling or celebrated their children's birthdays, graduations and weddings.

When they first started gathering to celebrate their birthdays in 1960, it was a surprise staged at the old L&M Cafeteria for Bobbie Wingo. The women, , along with friend Mary Carnes, were members of the old T.J. Guice Elementary School PTA, lived in the same east Atlanta neighborhood and worked part-time at C&S Bank, where they were known as the Monday housewives.

Those connections eventually came undone -- kids grew up, people moved to different communities. Bobbie, now 81, headed to Hampton adn then Locust Grove. Mary, who at 83 is the oldest in the group, moved to Sandy Springs. Hazel and Joyce wound up in Conyers.

But apparently, some things are meant to last.

And so on Thursday, there they were eating salads and panini sandwiches, laughing at the sentiments printed on colorful birthday greeting cards and a strand of “remember when” moments that are like precious jewels to them.

Remember when that big snowstorm came and my husband told me to stay home and as soon as he left I picked up everybody and the car wouldn’t start when it was time to go home? Remember the time I got up enough nerve to ask for a raise and they gave us a quarter? No, 15 cents? Remember?

And as the years passed, they would add others to the “birthday bunch.” Marian Barden, 79, whom Bobbie met after moving to Hampton; Pat Neese, 83, who is in a nursing home now; and Mary McDaniel, a longtime friend of Bobbie’s who died two years ago.

In all those years, they say, they haven’t had one argument.

Well, there was that one between Bobbie and Joyce, the year George McGovern tried to unseat Richard Nixon.

A staunch Republican, Joyce called up Bobbie one day and ran down a list of bad things that would happen if she voted for McGovern.

When they hung up that day, Bobbie looked at her husband and said, “I guess that’s the end of our friendship.”

Joyce called back five minutes later and assured Bobbie their friendship was far more important that politics. Years later when Nixon left office, Bobbie called and asked Joyce whether she remembered their conversation about McGovern.

"You were right, all those bad things did happened," she told her, laughing.

“We’re all opposites and know it so we just don’t discuss it,” said Bobbie, the lone Democrat and the only Presbyterian in the group.

“We have the same values,” said Joyce, mother of three sons and six grandchildren. “We’re all are family-oriented.”

Indeed, except for Hazel, whose husband died 30 years ago, they’ve all been married more than 50 years and in most cases more than 60. For instance, Mary Carnes, who Judge Charlie Carnes 63 years ago,  has been married the longest. (Charlie Carnes is the retired chief judge of the Fulton County State Court.)

To this day, they can’t say for sure what brought the four of them together. What’s for sure is Bobbie Wingo has kept them together.

“She’s the glue,” said Mary Carnes.

Bobbie, she  and the others say,  is the energy that powers the group and finds things for them to do.

"She pushes until we set a date," said Mary.