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Article snippet: Sara and Charles Rippey first locked eyes at their elementary school in tiny Hartford, Wis., close to 90 years ago. “They’ve basically been together ever since,” said one of their sons, Mike Rippey. The couple, who were 98 and 100 years old, died together on Sunday in Napa, Calif., when a fast-moving wildfire whipped into their house and they were unable to escape. They were among at least 17 people who have been killed in the wildfires in Northern California’s wine country; up to 20,000 have been forced to evacuate. “We kids would always talk about what it would be like if one of them died and the other was still alive,” Mike Rippey, 71, said. “They just couldn’t be without each other. The fact that they went together is probably what they would have wanted.” Mr. Rippey arrived at his parents’ house on Tuesday afternoon, hopeful that he would find something of significance in the rubble. He could barely make out where the front door had been. There were the remains of the garage and an old Lexus, now looking like a charred heap. There were few tangible signs left of his parents’ long life together, from their childhoods in Hartford to the University of Wisconsin-Madison where they both graduated, or from their far-flung travels during World War II to Charles Rippey’s job as an engineer for Firestone, the tire company. The Rippeys got married before the war took him to North Africa, France and Italy; when he returned, they settled down to have children, five in a... Link to the full article to read more