The Joy of Being Grimm
An Optometry Couple See the World Eye to Eye
In late June 2022, I had completed my mini-campervan conversion in Denver and found my wonder dog, Mr. Bones, at a shelter. We hit the road. My retirement plan was to explore van life, a subject I researched thoroughly and knew nothing about.
In other words, I needed advice from experienced van lifers, but did not know any.
Enter Suzie and Brad Grimm, of Durango, Colorado. Suzie had gone to optometry school with my brother-in-law, Steve I. Ball, an optometrist who married my sister Amy. His standard opening joke was, “Hi. I am Doctor I. Ball. Get it?” Oh boy.
Amy had met Brad and Suzie and knew they had been exploring van life for about 10 years at that point. She did me a solid and connected me with them. I drove south from Denver, then west to Durango, in the southwestern corner of the state.
Durango is Spanish for “Where the cool, outdoorsy people live.”
Upon arrival, I rang their front doorbell, wondering if these folks could clue me in.
When the door opened, I saw in front of me a tall, handsome couple. At a glance, Brad looked to me like the brainiac half of the pair, the quiet guy back in HS with glasses who got straight A’s in math and chemistry, while I never understood what a mole was.
Suzie was a sweetheart with a huge, genuine grin and a soft heart I could almost see, but she was just as sharp. Make no mistake. I didn’t.
In my excitement to meet real van lifers, I blurted out, “Hi. I’m Amy’s brother. Steve sent me here. Which way is van life, please?”
From their perspective, they saw a strange, eager, but utterly lost-looking white-bearded man with a cute little dog at their front door.
They gave each other a curious look, as long-time couples do, and humored me. ‘Come on in,” Suzie said, ‘and let your dog off the leash.” “But,” I sputtered, “he’s not house-trained.” Suzie, a self-described “hippy chick” from the 70s, waved off my concern. “He’ll be fine,” she assured me.
Mr. Bones ran straight to the living room and took a dump.
On the carpet.
“Oh, my God!” I said, “I’m SO sorry!” Mentally, I calculated the cost of cleaning the carpet professionally, and was prepared to sign over my monthly Social Security check.
Fortunately for me, Suzie never lost her cool. “It’s okay. You pick up the poop, and we’ll worry about cleaning it later. Happens all the time with our friends’ dogs.”
What a relief. She is SO cool!
They did not disappoint as hosts or as van life advisors. Brad showed me their converted white Ford Sportsmobile van and explained some inside tips. “The I-Overlander app is the trick,” he said. “It’s free. All the boondocking locations are shared by the people who discover them.” “Boondocking?” I said, puzzled.
“Boondocking,” he explained, “is finding places that are legal to camp if the police don’t find you. If they find you, the trick is to apologize (“Sorry, officer”) and leave immediately, so they don’t arrest you.”
So that’s how it works? Not, “Officer, shouldn’t you be somewhere eating a donut?”
He explained that their favorite type of boondocking was dispersed camping, finding an isolated, scenic spot to park for the night, with no other campers in sight. Just them. For them, vicious wild animals gathered around their van late at night.
When Suzie and Brad boondocked at this idyllic location, alone, far from any other humans who might help them in an emergency. For these two, the wolves and coyotes serenaded them as they ate dinner, with a howling vocal performance of Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers.”
The bears presented a lovely interpretive dance, which was quite moving.
(Later, when I tried dispersed camping on a mountaintop in Montana, instead of being serenaded by wild animals, the forces of darkness converged upon me. I was attacked after midnight by meth heads. Where were the wild animals to serenade me?)
The next morning, after I thanked them, they pointed the direction and said, “Go West, young man.” I was on my way! An official vanlifer, duly designated by Suzie and Brad.
As I drove off, watching them wave in the rear view, I saw them speak to each other. Was it my imagination, or did she say,” He’ll never make it, will he?” And did Brad say, “Not a chance.”
***
Who are Brad and Suzie, where are they from, and how did they stumble into van life?
Like my own dear father, Suzie is from Evansville, Indiana, a sleepy little town that sits on the banks of the Ohio River, opposite a much larger city, Louisville, Kentucky. It was populated largely by German-American Catholic immigrants who came down the Ohio in the late 1800s.
During a summer visit, I discovered Evansville squeezes every bit of humidity out of the river that physics will allow. Not for me, thanks.
Suzie attended the impressive Reitz Memorial High School in Evansville, like all “good Catholics” did, but had bigger plans in life.
Unlike the other good Catholic kids, Suzie had an urge to see the world. The youngest in her large family, she went to college and became an eye doctor. Why? At her first encounter with an eye doctor, in grade 4, she said she got an ugly pair of glasses. Her path to optometry school was a long and winding one, but it had a happy result.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her, Brad was back east in Cumberland, Maryland, a small, historic town of less than 20,000, located near the Cumberland Narrows, which funnel motorists through the town.
At age 12, Brad got a pair of glasses from the eye doctor. For the first time, he saw clearly. “So that’s what the world looks like!” he said. “I want to be an eye doctor and help people see.” Like Suzie, Brad somehow knew he would have to leave Cumberland.
Like a lot of their optometry classmates in the late 70s, they O.D.d—not overdosed on drugs; they got their doctor of optometry (O.D.) degrees.
Little did these two young eye doctors know they were destined to meet each other in Fargo, North Dakota. Some things are meant to be.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
After Optometry School at Indiana University, Suzie tried working in a private practice in Boulder, Colorado, but “It did not suit the hippy chick in me.” So off she went into the wild for a job with the Indian Health Service. They had her driving a 35-foot Winnebago outfitted as her exam room to reservations to see Native American patients in North and South Dakota. Along for the ride was her dog, Yazzie.
Brad, who did not know he was destined to meet Suzie, was also driving a mobile optometry clinic across Northern Minnesota from May to October, the few snow-free months. One day, Suzie, who had heard that Brad was on a similar track (or is it in a similar truck?), called him to compare notes, which led to a chance meeting in Fargo.
Both said they felt a “bit lonely” traveling place to place for months on the vast plains, visiting remote reservations, and felt lucky to find one another. At a dance. “We were the only two people,“ Suzie told me, “in the Great North Plains who didn’t know how to polka.”
“Anna one, anna two, anna three.” It was meant to be.
Of their first meeting, Brad recalls that he liked her dog. Suzie liked Brad’s car, a Saab. I tried to imagine two optometrists dating. I envisioned Suzie holding up two of her latest outfits for Brad to find out which he liked best. “Which is better, one or two?”
What I heard these two very modest people say is that they actually fell in love at first sight. Now, just let them try to deny it! They look like they are still madly in love today.
They are an example of the joy in being Grimm.
***
Try to interview this modest couple without being amazed. I dare you. Suzie went first.
She told me about her externship with the Indian Health Service, working in Arizona and in Alaska. To reach Alaskan Inuit populations, she took a bush plane, landing on gravel runways, serving remote towns ranging in size from 20 to 200 people.
Some towns were traditional, living as their ancestors did, while other small towns had modernized, using satcoms. To her, it was a curious study in cultural anthropology, one of her college courses.
One time, her bush pilot flew low and buzzed a grizzly bear, which stood and swatted angrily at the plane with its mammoth paws. “Bush pilots don’t live very long,” she told me.
***
Brad told me, after working in Samoa, Saudi Arabia and Germany (is there any place they didn’t work?) they volunteered to work in Nepal for a few months, at a clinic where the eye surgeons would perform up to 100 cataract surgeries a day for poor, blinded people who often walked for days to find a bus to take them to the eye care clinic.
Using an unorthodox but efficient approach, the surgeons had the patients line up in the operating room. While one patient was on the operating table, the next patient watched the surgery, ready to leap onto the table as soon as the previous patient got up. “It was like an assembly line,” Brad said. “Somehow they always finished with the long line of patients.”
“Many of the patients were elderly grandparents,” Brad said, ‘who arrived holding the hand of a grandchild they had never seen. After the surgery, they opened their eyes and saw their grandchild for the first time.” Over the phone, I imagined Brad getting misty-eyed as he said. “It was beautiful to see patients regain their sight, but sad that many had blinding, untreatable glaucoma, and many children became blind because of malnutrition.”
It was not all fun and games.
***
If you think this is the end of their adventures, wrong. They’re just getting started.
After meeting in Fargo and then spending a year working in Miami in the early 80s, they searched the world for another adventure. They received offers for jobs in Africa, then came a telegram from the government of American Samoa, inviting them to work in the island’s Tropical Medical Center.
Who could say no to a job on a tropical island?
“The plane, boss, the plane!”
***
Samoa? Where the hell is that? It just so happens I know a bit about American Samoa.
When I was a child, no one knew exactly where the floating island territory of Samoa, all 199 square miles of it, was located on a given day, which made it hard to get there. That, plus my parents would not pay for the plane ticket.
Another curious fact is that, for decades, their main export was coconut-topped Samoa cookies, baked by lovely Samoan women wearing lavalavas, and sold door to door by the Girl Scouts. Now, the main export is hunks of lean red meat, with brand names like Dwayne Johnson and Jason Momoa. American women seem to find this dish quite delectable.
***
Back to our story.
On arrival, they learned they were the only eye doctors on the island of 30,000 people.
It was a challenging situation; half the patients had eye injuries or tropical eye diseases. In my public health career, I too learned that the hot, humid tropics are breeding grounds for awful diseases.
After the initial shock, one gradually becomes accustomed to dealing with mysterious diseases not normally covered in U.S. Optometry Schools.
They dreamed of opening an optical shop they would call “Tropical Optical.” But, as expatriates and outsiders, they were flummoxed by the complexity of island politics. After failing to realize their dream, they decided to move on after seven years.
Brad started describing Samoa to me by saying, “It was hot and humid...” “Brad,” I interrupted, “You were living in a tropical paradise. How was it? Really.”
“Oh,” Brad said, “It was awesome! We loved the island vibe. There was a large, lively expat community, and we made lots of friends.” “And where did you live?” I asked, suspecting that I knew the answer. ”Right on the beach,” he said. I knew it.
One day, they went out snorkeling in the ocean, right in front of their house. When they got back to shore, an islander was awaiting their return and said, “Come quickly, emergency!”
How did the islander find them? Easy, on an island the size of Samoa, 77 square miles, everyone knows where everyone is, all the time. The ER had put out an alert on the radio. “Would someone please go tell Brad and Suzie to come to the ER immediately?”
Try that in America. Only on a small island.
Curious about the rumor that Pacific island people love Spam, I asked Brad if it was true. “Oh yes, and they love corned beef too. The “Extra-Fat” Palm brand corned beef from New Zealand comes in five-gallon buckets.”
Now, who doesn’t love a five-gallon bucket of Extra-Fat Corned Beef?
***
Saudi Arabia was like Samoa, only now in an ocean of sand, not of saltwater, and they could not wear beach gear around town.
In Saudi Arabia, they worked in an eye hospital treating Bedouins and princes. Instead of half-time on a tropical island in the South Pacific, they worked six days a week, as many foreigners were required to do, in the unfamiliar and restrictive world of Wahhabi Islam.
These two got around.
***
Of these two, my brother-in-law, Steve, told me, “It’s unbelievable. Everybody loves them.” I could see why. At first, I struggled with how to tell their story in a relatable way. They seemed to have gone everywhere and done everything almost effortlessly. While successful, they also had the rare quality of being modest about it.
In trying to think of a title for their story, it hit me. It was a story about joy, featuring a couple named “Grimm.” The secret of their happy career and marriage seems to me to rest on a real joy, a real zest for life. Like many kids of the 70s, they rejected conventional ways of living and working to try everything the world threw at them.
Many couples might have cracked under the stress of adjusting to new countries and new jobs every few years, but Suzie and Brad seemed to thrive on it.
They ate it up by the bucketful, like it was Extra-Fat Corned Beef from New Zealand.
***
But what has that got to do with you, dear readers? Simply this: In life, we all have to make choices, and once made, we have to live with the consequences. Suzie and Brad had the good luck to find each other, and to have the joie de vivre so common in world travelers.
From time to time, circumstances change, setbacks occur, and we face new challenges.
It can be difficult, depressing, even devastating, at first. After we get knocked down, we either get up and get back in the fight or give up.
Some people will tell you, “Stay down! You can’t win. Just admit defeat.” Ignore them.
I can’t tell anyone else what the right thing is for them, but I can tell you that there are people like Brad and Suzie who set an example for how to live a meaningful life. They found their calling, served patients for decades, and now enjoy their retirement.
If you are in outdoorsy Durango, Colorado, knock on their front door and ask them, “Do you know the way to my future?”
They’ll look into it for you.
Want to Be Featured in a Future Blog?
In my blog posts, I share stories of people who are reinventing their lives in ways big and small. If you’ve taken a leap — and want to share your story—please let me know.
I’m curious to know who actually reads to the end of my blogs. If you read the whole piece, please send me a note letting me know.
Curious about My Life On The Road with My Dog, Mr. Bones?
Feel free to follow our journey on Facebook or Instagram (Carl Camembert Henn (@carl_camembert_henn) • Instagram photos and videos)
Help a Starving Artist?
OK, I’m not starving, as you can see, but making it as a writer is tough these days. Please follow me on social media and share my blog with others.
To attract an agent or publisher for my next book, I need to grow my platform on social media, soaring from about 400 current followers to perhaps 10,0000. Help!
What an amazing couple! Very inspiring!
Loved this story, Carl. Brad and Suzie sound like a couple I would have met during my Peace Corps days in the early 80s in the DRC! Exceptional people doing exceptional things (humbly).