The Portland Oregonian reports that an Arkansas family trying to fulfill an ailing grandmother’s last request arrived in Hillsboro early Sunday with the grandmother’s body in the back of their recreational vehicle.  The woman apparently died in Wyoming, and her family completed the trip. The 79-year-old woman, who lived in Oroville, Calif., suffered from advanced kidney disease and wished to see her family before she died, Hillsboro Police Lt. Michael Rouches said. 

Rouches said the woman’s family picked her up in Oroville, drove her to visit family in Arkansas and were on their way to see other family in Hillsboro when she died. “We believe they were about 1,100 miles from Hillsboro when she passed away,” Rouches told the Oregonian. “We believe they were in Wyoming. That’s based on gas receipts.”  In the 1983 movie starring Chevy Chase, the Griswold family unknowingly hauls their dead grandma along on a summer vacation.

In 1980, Windber native Cindy Hassan found herself driving the streets of Amahdi, Kuwait, in a Camaro Z-28. “I was one of the first foreign women to have sports cars there. I used to get followed by boys constantly,” she said. Hassan, who married her husband Jamil in 1973, had moved there less than a year after graduating from high school. It was a different world for her, she said. In those days, the Arabian Peninsula was still largely isolated from western influence. “It was difficult at times. I was so homesick,” she said. Days were hot, with temperatures often in the hundred degree range and the air smelled of sea. The cool seasons of Windber seemed very far away.

Before Kuwait, the farthest she had traveled was to Ohio, visiting relatives. She even met her future husband in Windber, she recalled. A local hangout back in the early 1970s was VI’s Pizza, along Graham Avenue. “Dec. 5, 1971, I remember the day exactly,” she said. She was there with friends and Jamil, then an engineering student at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, drove up with a friend and came inside.

Both Pearson and the island airport are experiencing delays because of the thick fog this morning.At Pearson International, about 20 flights are running 10 to 15 minutes late, said spokesperson Scott Armstrong At the Toronto City Centre Airport, the first two morning flights left on schedule, but as the weather deteriorated several flights had to be cancelled, said spokesperson Brad Cicero“For the next handful of flights we’re going to be operating in and out of Pearson airport,” he said.

Travelers will check in as usual to the island airport, and after clearing security they’ll be bused to Pearson directly to the plane.“As always we’d like to remind our customers to call in advance to see if their flight is running on time,” Armstrong said.