Gertrude Laramore and Ruby O'Neal were the best of friends in high school.
Though they graduated one year apart, they always believed they would keep in touch. They thought maybe their children would grow up to be as close as they were at Conway High School.
"But we haven't seen or talked to each other in 60 years," said O'Neal, who now lives in Griffin, Georgia. "Until a few months ago, I didn't know where she was."
And Friday, the high school bosom buddies met for the first time in six decades at Pamela Evans' Sugar and Spice Fairy on Boyce Street in Manning.
"I was coming down for a high school reunion, and my sister lives in Bamberg," said O'Neal. "We firs talked on the phone in June, and I called her this week and said, 'Let's get together.'"
Laramore told O'Neal that the pair would "meet in the middle," she said.
"I live in Florence, so I told her she didn't have to come all the way to Florence," Laramore said.
The women searched online for a midpoint, and Sugar and Spice Fairy was the pick.
"We saw the chalkboard in here when we came in, and Pamela wrote our names and about our 60-year split," O'Neal said. "She's been just a wonderful hostess."
O'Neal said, having lost track of Laramore after so many years, she had no idea where her old friend could be.
"And then I went on a cruise, and I recognized an accent," she said. "I asked this lady where she was from, and she said Conway. I asked her if she knew Gertrude Laramore, and she said she did."
The woman, in fact, said Laramore had married her first cousin.
"They told me she wasn't on Facebook, but that her daughter was, so I contacted her daughter," Laramore said. "We were talking on the phone in June. The first time we talked, it was for about an hour!"
Though both women went their separate ways after high school - O'Neal graduated in 1956 and Laramore in 1957 - their lives were eerily similar.
"We each had five children, three girls and two boys," said O'Neal. "I lost my second child. And she lost her second child."
O'Neal's sister, Fawn El Kirby, said she was just astonished by the coincidences.
"I mean, I think it's amazing," she said. "And I'm so glad that I got to be here today to see them get to know each other again."
O'Neal was woried she might not get the chance: Laramore had been having some heart problems, and had been admitted to the Medical University of South Carolina hospital over the summer.
"I'm glad that we got a chance to do this," Laramore said. "She said that if she got the chance, she was going to come see me, because we don't know what's going to happen."
The women sat at Sugar and Spice Fairy for about two hours Friday, and Evans said she was happy to be a part of their reunion.
"I think it's sweet that they got to see each other after all this time," she said. "We tried to make it special for them. We wrote '60 years later' on the chalkboard and took some pictures, and we have some Elvis playing because they love Elvis. I'm just excited that we could be a part of this."
