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Esta página no está disponible en español. ORLANDO SENTINELWell WishersBy Jeff Kunerth
December 25, 2002 The house had everything Steve Bishop was looking for and one thing he wasn't -- a wishing well. The wishing well sits at the back of his driveway. It's a circular, red-brick structure with a wood roof painted green to match the house and hanging plants on the corners. Across the street, where Lonie Carter lives, is another wishing well. Jerilyn and Charlie Morgan, two doors down, also have a wishing well. Next door to them, there's a wishing well in the front yard of Don and Carol Koester's house. And on the opposite end of the street, in front of the house where Ramonita Cohen's daughter grew up and her husband died, is a small, square wooden wishing well. Something about the house told Bishop this is where he was meant to be -- on a street of well wishers. There are some who might say the wishing wells on Pisgah Drive in Altamonte Springs are nothing more than ornamental facades to mask the well pumps they surround. Some might look at this two-block-long street as just another ordinary neighborhood of concrete-block homes built in the 1950s and '60s. But facades are deceiving. They speak only of the obvious, revealing nothing beneath the surface. And neighborhoods are like snowflakes. No two are exactly alike. Inside the five houses with the wishing wells are mothers, fathers and children whose lives are the culmination of wishes come true, dreams denied, hopes yet to be fulfilled. Ramonita Cohen She was visiting her daughter in Atlanta for Christmas and returned home to find a small, square wishing well in her front yard. "I thought it was beautiful," Ramonita Cohen said. The wishing well was a gift from a friend of her daughter. Cohen knows it's just out there to disguise the well they put in the front yard after the one in the back went dry two years ago. But to Cohen, it's a daily reminder of her own good fortune. "I look at the wishing well every day and I feel great," said Cohen, 55. "I feel I'm a very lucky person. All my wishes come true. Oh, yes." She wished her son-in-law would find a new job after he was laid off. And he did. She wished for good health after having heart surgery and an emergency appendectomy. And ever since the wishing well arrived, that wish has come true. "My latest wish is I don't want my daughter to have any more babies. Three is enough," Cohen said. "She agrees." Friends call her "Chiqui," a childhood nickname for "little." The youngest of nine children, Ramonita Cohen was born in Puerto Rico and married a Jewish man from New York City. They were married three months short of 33 years. When he died of heart failure in April 1998, it was in the living room of the house they bought in 1982 with its wood paneled walls, terrazzo floor and collection of family pictures he hung on the wall. She goes to work every day at the Lake Brantley High School cafeteria. She likes her privacy, her independence, a life all her own. She feels close to her family, but if a house comes up for sale on the street, she's not telling her daughter. Living next door to your children is not her idea of a dream come true. "Five miles might be close enough," she said. Some think wishes are ambitions, some think they are luck, some think they are foolishness. Ramonita Cohen contends that wishes are just another way to talk to God. "A wish is a prayer," she said. "It's your faith and your beliefs. I believe your faith is everything." Steve Bishop As a boy about his son's age, Steve Bishop dreamed of being an architect. Instead, he ended up in the Navy, where he attended the nuclear-power school at the Orlando Naval Training Center. He spent six years in the service, another six working for a utility company in Dothan, Ala. He met a woman and married. It didn't last, but they had a son together. When she moved to Colorado with the boy, Bishop returned to Orlando. Every summer that his son came to visit, Bishop took the boy to Gatorland, where they would toss coins into a wishing well. He never said it out loud, for that would wreck the wish, but every coin hit the water with the hope that one day his son Jaret would live with him. "And now he is," said Bishop, 41, a Lockheed Martin engineer. "And it didn't happen until I moved into this house." Steve Bishop believes in wishes coming true. A year after moving into the house with the wishing well, he met Jeanne Bivens, 32. Five months ago, they had the baby daughter he wished for. Twice a week, Bishop buys lottery tickets. He got lucky once, hitting five of six numbers for $5,300. He's convinced that someday he will hit the jackpot. "I really do feel I'm going to win the lottery," he said. "I think if you think positive, things will turn out positive." Don and Carol Koester "I don't believe in luck," said Carol Koester, 68. "I don't wish upon a star or a wishing well." She and her husband are practical people. They bought the house on Pearl Lake Causeway 30 years ago because of its solid, concrete-block construction. Durability over style. Don Koester, 70, made his living buying things other people didn't want and reselling them. A truckload of toothpicks here, 2,400 oscillating fans there. The house was paid for with surplus inventories of lampshades, dinette sets, and John Deere garden trailers. He retired in 1991, but there are still boxes of souvenir state spoons in the garage. Luck to Don and Carol Koester isn't something that just happens. Wishes aren't coins tossed into the water or candles on a birthday cake. Wishes are goals, ambitions. Luck is the payoff for persistence. "I have wishes and dreams, but I make them happen -- or try to," Carol said. The wishing well in their front yard with the faux water bucket is just an ornament, a landmark for directions to their house. And it's a reminder of Ohio, where Carol's father built a wishing well outside her childhood home and every crayon-on-paper picture she drew as a child contained a wishing well. "I've always like wishing wells. It adds a homey touch," Carol said. "But I never thought of them as a place to wish." They raised two children in the house, a son and a daughter. The girl, Jerilyn, grew up and moved to Atlanta. While her parents were overseas, Jerilyn came home to house-sit. It was then that the house next door came on the market. "When she was a little girl, she told me her wish was that when she got married, she wanted to live next door," Carol said. "And that one came true." Jerilyn and Charlie Morgan On the living-room wall is a large framed poster of Elton John from his "Leather Jackets" days. He's dressed, like the rest of the band, in motorcycle leather. The second guy from the right, the one with the scowl, is Charlie Morgan, John's drummer for 17 years. On both sides of the poster are framed records of gold and platinum, shiny testimony to Morgan's success as a drummer who has played with everyone from Kate Bush to Roger Whittaker. A big Elton John fan, Jerilyn's 13-year-old daughter became e-mail pen pals with Morgan. This caused some concern for Jerilyn, who agreed to chaperone her daughter and a friend to a 1998 Elton John concert in Tallahassee. At the concert, Morgan provided the three with prime seats, invited them backstage and shared drinks and a long conversation with Jerilyn after the girls had gone to bed. "We talked from midnight to 7 a.m.," said Jerilyn, 48, a lifestyle coach. "I'm a counselor, and he was pouring his heart out to me. He's down to earth, no pretense." A romance was born. She moved to London with Morgan and then, four years ago, they bought the house with a wishing well next to her parents. In the back of the garage, where the previous owner had a workshop, Morgan has created a recording studio so narrow his friends call it the "Thin Man Studio." In there, he records drum tracks for songs, movies, TV shows and jingles. When not touring with Elton, he plays with a group of rock veterans from Deep Purple, Rare Earth and Pablo Cruise called the Voices of Classic Rock. In Orlando, he teams with former Orleans singer Larry Hoppen. From their house with the wishing well, Jerilyn and Charlie Morgan believe all things are possible. They make "dream boards" from pictures of things they want to own or achieve. "We do believe in wishing," said Morgan, 47. "Bit by bit, they are coming true." Wishing, Jerilyn said, is the first step in "visioning." It's creating the life you want inside your head and then making the vision come true. "It's owning your vision," she said. "What two steps can I take to get me closer to my wish, my dreams?" Lonie Carter From the dining room, Lonie Carter retrieved a picture frame and wiped the dust from the glass. Mounted behind the glass are two 45 vinyl records, the A and B sides from the days of the Lonie Carter Band. The record was the payoff for winning a battle of the bands at the old Sullivan's Trailway Lounge on Orange Blossom Trail. Carter wrote both songs on the record -- I May Not Be The Son of Hank Williams But I Got A Daddy Too and Amanda Lee, a song named for his daughter. He played the bars and lounges of Central Florida for 17 years, giving it up only after the birth of his son, Scout, seven years ago. "There was no future in playing the local bar scene," said Carter, 42. After two daughters and two divorces, having a son with his third wife was a wish come true, Carter said. He's teaching Scout how to fish and play a guitar. In the back yard, they roast marshmallows together. Carter disbanded the group but kept his day job. For 25 years, Lonie Carter has worked in the heating and air conditioning business. He runs into customers who remember him from the band: "There's still a lot of people who know who I am." Carter grew up in this neighborhood. His parents live in the house they bought around the corner in 1972, the same year Don and Carol Koester moved into their house on Pearl Lake Causeway. The street of wishing wells is the kind of place where houses are bought and sold without any real-estate signs in the front yard. The house next to Bishop was bought by the son of his neighbor on the other side. When a house on Pisgah Drive became available eight years ago, Carter jumped at the chance to buy it. Carter remodeled the house himself and built much of its furniture. The circular wishing well in the front yard, made from blocks of 2-by-4s, is his handiwork also. "I just thought it would dress it up and make it look quaint," he said. "Honestly, most of the people built them because around here, whenever it got so darn cold, the wells would freeze." His mother liked it so much, he built a wishing well for her backyard well pump. Carter is a superstitious man. If he sees a coin on the ground and it's tails, he won't pick it up. He will back up and go around if a black cat is in his path. But he's not big on wishful thinking. He's trying to put the band back together, play some parties, but he has no illusions of making a career out of music. Those dreams are dead. He does have one wish he hopes comes true. It's parked beneath his carport, a primer-gray '56 Chevy pickup truck. He'd like to restore the truck, work on it with his son, and then sell it along with his black, limited edition Dale Earnhardt pickup for enough money to buy a '32 or '34 Ford Coupe. "One of my dreams is to have a street rod I can enjoy," he said, "and leave to my son."
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