Everything that happened was as if it was meant to be.

Her story quite literally begins with a single event – the destruction of her father’s barbershop during World War II in Warsaw, Poland – and along with it, his livelihood. This occurrence, though devastating, was to shape Gail’s* life from that point forward.

Gail doesn’t remember a lot of the events during that time, because she was so young. But her parents, Sam and Sally Lauer, often told the story of their survival to people they met while she was growing up, and she thinks that this is mainly where her early recollections come from. She never had a ‘normal’ childhood, and cannot even remember playing with dolls or toys in her early years.

The Germans invaded Poland in September of 1939, when Gail was almost three years old, and her family didn’t leave Poland until the end of that year. Uncertain of the family’s safety after the loss of his barbershop, Gail’s father decided to go to his aunt’s house in Berezne in the Ukraine to determine if it was safer there.

After several weeks, her father sent for them. According to Gail, her mother tried to get members of her family to go with them: her parents, two sisters, a brother, their families, her father’s siblings. No one was willing.

“They said that nothing’s going to happen – nothing happened in WWI, nothing will happen now,” said Gail. “I don’t think we would have gone either if my father’s barbershop hadn’t been destroyed. So we were lucky.”

Her father sent a young man to help Gail and her mother sneak across the border. When they got to Berezne, the family lived with her father’s aunt in a rooming house she owned. Her father worked in a barbershop, and her mother worked as a seamstress and manicurist.

They were there quite a while before the regular German army (not the Nazis, but the soldiers at war) occupied the town. Gail’s mother did the German General’s nails, and her father cut his hair. Historical accounts of the war indicate that for most Jews in Berezne, conditions were terribly difficult. But some Jewish families, including Gail’s, were able to evade the worst of the problems through luck -- at least for a time.

The regular army was in Berezne for about a year; toward the end of their stay, the General told Gail’s parents that they should tell their relatives and other people they knew that “things are going to happen.”

“He told us to hide – to get away,” said Gail. “He warned us so that we could start planning.”

And plan they did. In the rooming house where they lived, Gail’s parents found that in the cellar, right beneath their room, there was a little space set apart from the main room – so they dug through the floor to that small, closed-off area. They brought down food and water to that area. In the middle of one night in 1942, the Nazis who had come to Berezne began rounding up all the Jews. Gail and her family went down into their hiding space, and they took along an orphaned 14-year-old girl, Esther, who was living with them.

They heard the Nazis going through the house, up above. Few people escaped as the Nazis went room to room rounding up everyone. When they got to her family’s room, they heard the Nazis talking about them.

“They said, ‘We didn’t get the Polish barber yet,’” Gail recalled. “I started to cry and my father put his hand over my mouth.”

Gail and her family stayed in the cellar through the next day – but then they had to get out. They crawled out in the middle of the night and immediately went to the only person that they thought could help them – the German General. He occupied a house in town that served as his headquarters and had many Ukrainian and Jewish people working for him. When Gail’s parents knocked at his door, the General listened to their pleas for help and then sent a young Ukrainian man to help them.

“He told the man to get a horse and wagon and to take us out of town,” said Gail. “And he did.”

The man dropped them at the edge of a forest and, pointing in one direction, told them to go that way. After he left, however, Gail’s mother said that they should go the opposite way.

“She just had a feeling that we should go the other way,” Gail said. “This was another important decision that turned out to be very fortunate for us.”

After a short time, the Ukrainian man came back to the forest with the Nazis and they went looking for Gail and her family in the area where he had told them to go. But her family was safely hidden in the bushes in the other direction.

“After a while, they gave up and left. That’s when our time in the forest began.”

Gail was five years old.

Reflecting on his journey, Tony said, “That old saying about ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ really is true in my case. The giants were my folks, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and the Franciscan monks. I thank them all for the view. I can never, ever, adequately repay any of them for all that they gave me. Their simple lessons for life were profound, and they stuck because they modeled them: deep faith that carried them through adversity, integrity, guts, generosity, a sense of service, humor, creativity, forgiveness, and so much more.”

Anthony reflected on the wisdom he had gained in his life. I asked him what of that wisdom he would share with the younger generations. “Seek wisdom. Look beyond yourself. Love much, and forgive much. Thank much; slow down. Hug a loved one, sip a glass of wine with each other, and enjoy the sunset,” he said.

He added, “I hope people remember that I lived and died a thankful man. I don’t know why I have been blessed like I have, but I have. I hope the last two words my lips utter are ‘Thank you.’ And if my lips can’t, my heart will.”

He ended with a simple but profound thought that ironically, also sums up his life very well. “In the end I’ve learned that it is love that counts, and you can only keep it by giving it away.”

On May 5th, 2013, the couples set out on their journey.

Although they were prepared and had trained for long distance hiking, there really was no preparing for what they were about to endure.

As Phil describes it, when the two couples began their journey, the four of them were like “kids in a candy store”—exploring, searching and discovering the meaning and ways of the Camino, together. After completing the first 100 miles, they all came to the realization that eventually, in order to achieve this monumental undertaking which they had planned for so long, they would inevitably have to do it in their own way—the pilgrim way—adjusting for pace and injuries.

Said Guy, “We’re all experienced hikers—Mikki and Phil climbed Mt. Whitney in California and Karen and I did the trek to Machu Picchu; however, I’m not sure we were prepared for the duration of this trip. The day-after-day walking took a toll on our bodies.”

If hikers get into trouble, they are given a phone number to call for help. According to the group, they saw their fair share of calamities.

“The person in front of us broke her leg, and the ambulance arrived in about an hour,” said Mikki.

Added Phil, “It would have been very unfortunate to have something major happen in some of the places—you have to go over two mountain ranges that are just as rough as the Pyrenees. You’re walking on a lot of farm country roads between the ranges, so to be in trouble in the mountains, that’s a whole different thing. Fortunately, you do have each other—other pilgrims are in view most of the time.”

“Storms happen through there and there is great risk,” said Guy. “There were two fatalities the week before we were there. We tried to be cautious and careful and take care of each other. The greatest challenge was keeping your spirits up each day through snow storms and rain storms.”

Although lucky not to experience anything dire, the group did not escape without injury.

“I managed to get through 470 out of the 500 miles, and then I got plantar fasciitis—which was excruciatingly painful. I did manage to get through the last 30 miles,” said Phil. “Mikki was the only one who didn’t have an injury of any sort.”

Said Karen, “After 260 miles, we had some injuries. Early on, I did a face plant, which tweaked my back a little bit, and Guy was having pain that felt like knives going up the bottoms of his feet, which turned out to be tendonitis. We went ahead on a bus and waited for Phil and Mikki to meet us in the next town. After that, we went in bits and spurts; we walked another 50 to 75 miles and partly with Phil and Mikki too, and then I got tendonitis and couldn’t wear my boots anymore. We took another bus at that point, and then Guy and I hiked the last 100 kilometers in sandals. Guy and I knew we would crawl in if we had to.”

According to Karen, hikers have to walk the last 100 kilometers, from Sarria to Santiago, in order to get an official 100-kilometer certificate (compostela). In St. Jean, the couples got their credentials, which they needed to have stamped along the way. For the last 100 kilometers, you have to have two stamps per day on your credentials to prove that you walked the distance. The couples got the credentials stamped at hotels, churches, or cafés along the route.

“We had a lot of rainy days,” said Mikki. “It would rain all day long, and it was constantly wet and cold every morning. I didn’t want to bring gloves because they were too heavy, so I put socks on my hands, but then the socks would get wet because of the constant rain. But the few sunny days brought it all together. Toward the end the weather got better—it was cold in the morning but nice in the afternoon.”

Karen added, “It was the coldest May in that region in 48 years—bitter cold. Sadly, they turned the heat off in the hostels and hotels on the last day of April. It was great for hiking, but when there’s no heat in your room, it’s freezing cold. Half the time it was so cold that you didn’t want to shower. The only places where they turned the heat back on were in the bigger cities, when tour groups were coming through.”

“There’s a saying—‘pilgrims should suffer,’” said Phil. “Some do their best to make sure that happened. It is a pilgrimage, and in the old days, there were no conveniences like they have today. They’ve done this trek for a thousand years; in medieval times, they’d ride on donkeys or on the back of ox carts. This last year, there were over 200,000 people that did the Camino. It’s getting progressively bigger.”

Phil sums up his experience on the journey in his final blog post on Monday, June 17, 2013, which says:

“Lastly, there is no way to express the feeling that I have for my ‘muse,’ my companion (who had no limits), the love of my life, other than to say—thank you, for talking me into this. It really wasn't about Santiago...it was about our journey together all the time."

Sadly, Irving’s wife passed away from a heart attack in 1990. It affected him deeply, and took him a long time to be able to move on.

“When my wife passed away, I went up to my family’s farm in the pasture where the cabins were and burned them down, so no one could go up there anymore,” said Irving. “I ended up going to counseling for two years after she died; I would just cry. One day, a young counselor advised me to go back to our house and get rid of my clothes, my house, and everything in it. She said it would be kind of life being reborn. So, I threw my old clothes away and bought new ones, and left. And, it was like being born again. It worked.” After moving on along his path, Irving married his second wife, Ida, about five years later. He met her at his cousin’s funeral in Idaho.

“I told her if she ever were to come to Washington, she should let me know and I would take her to lunch. Six months later, she called me and said she was passing through town, so I took her to lunch. Six months after that she did the same thing, so I took her to lunch, again. After another six months, we were married.”

In his profession, Bill has reflected a lot about the fact that life is short and that you should live it to the fullest.

“Everybody thinks they’re invincible, even funeral directors,” he said. “We just never thought anything could happen to us, my wife and me. We never got to the point where we thought we would ever be facing death.”

That is, until the couple visited friends in the mountains of Arizona over Labor Day weekend, 1989. It was a life-changing experience, as they were coming home on the highway and were hit head-on, twice, after a woman traveled over the line into their lane, from the opposite direction.

"The next thing I knew, she's in my lane and I told Jenny to brace herself," said Bill.“ She hit us and spun us around in the road. We had multiple injuries—broken bones and bruises—and we still have ramifications. That accident changed our outlook on life and how quickly it could end. Neither of us were really the same after that, in terms of our outlook on life and how short life is.”