Hello, My Sweetheart: A Life and Career on Three Continents

Sigrid Gassner-Roberts’ unique work evolves from her recollections of narrating her life story to her husband, who lies in a coma in a Viennese hospital after a brain aneurysm. The doctors tell her that he can hear her, so she begins by reminding him of their first date.

Sigrid had been a young Austrian student who originally came to America to study on a Fulbright scholarship. She had a busy teaching career and her work took her from the US to Austria to Australia.

It was in Australia that she met her future husband, a US naval officer who proposed only a few short weeks after they met in 1975. The couple had been married but four years when her husband had his stroke. Sigrid finds a path to caring for him while carrying on with her teaching duties and their love story continues until his death.