Anniversaries: Brien and Anne Seeley

Brien and Anne Seeley celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on Sept. 12, just the two of them, as COVID-19 eliminated the chance of any grand get-together. They opted for a two-night stay in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where they had dinner at the outdoor restaurant The Bench. They sat around the flame pit table rekindling their many fond memories and deep appreciation of their lucky lives together.

Brien and Anne saw each other for the first time when his parents were house-hunting in Anne’s neighborhood in Walnut Creek in 1963. Anne was 13; Brien was 14. She was playing 4-square in the street and he was smitten from that very moment. At his behest, his parents moved their family to the house 200 yards from that of his future wife. They attended Las Lomas High School where they had their first date at the Turnabout Dance. They lost touch for two years after high school. Brien attended UC Berkeley and Anne went to UC Davis. They saw each other again by chance on Christmas Eve 1968 at the Sunvalley Shopping Mall in Concord and dated from then on.

They were married on Sept. 12, 1970 under a huge oak tree at the Boundary Oak Country Club in Walnut Creek, where about 200 shivering friends and family members assembled amongst the tiki torches that lit the grassy knoll. The day after their weeklong honeymoon to Carmel, Hearst Castle, Disneyland and the Reno Air Races, they both started classes at UCSF; he as a medical student and she in nursing school. He went on to a residency in eye surgery while she became an ICU nurse.

After completing their medical training at UCSF, they chose to move to Santa Rosa to start his private practice of ophthalmology in 1977. Since 1974, after a day-trip to Santa Rosa, they had been interested in living there. They thought of Santa Rosa as a safe city with clean air, little traffic and great proximity to wildlands.

Brien continues to enjoy his full-time ophthalmology practice with Anne as RN in the office. His hobbies are aviation, writing for Sonoma Medicine and playing baseball, guitar and piano. Anne continues her three decades of being a very active civic leader in many city and county environmental concerns and Board Membership on Sonoma County Conservation Action (SCCA).

They have a son and a daughter: son, Damon, born in 1976, married to Jane Kim with whom he shares two daughters: Julia and Olivia, and daughter, Ellen, who was born in 1979.

They lived by simple axioms: “Believe that the other is always doing the best that they can,” “emotional generosity is the magical ingredient” and “never keep score.”