It's a warm autumn day, perfect for walking. Peggy Kite lets her dog, Belle, lead the way along the Little Miami Scenic Trail, its asphalt strewn with brown and yellow leaves.

Everyone has a story worth telling. At least, that's the theory. To test it, Tempo is throwing darts at the phone book. When a dart hits a name, a reporter dials the phone number and asks if someone in the home will be interviewed. Stories appear on Fridays.

        When her husband was ill, Peggy walked to relieve stress. Now she walks almost every day because she loves it, and because it helps keep her fit.

        The 72-year-old Indian Hill woman became a widow 14 months ago.

        She was married 49 years to William McD. Kite, a leading Cincinnati attorney, philanthropist and a former mayor of Indian Hill. Peggy and Bill raised four children, and created a lifetime of memories. He died at age 76 after a lengthy illness.

        “You have to face up to it,” Peggy says, walking briskly. “But rather than look at it as the end of something, I used the reverse approach and said it's the beginning of something. And how could I make that fulfilling?”

        For starters, she refused to retreat into a shell. A musician, she invites friends to her home for recitals. They gather in the living room and perform piano pieces, mainly classics, “but not stuffy classics,” Peggy says.

        And she still ventures out to activities she's always enjoyed. The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, for one. Parties, for another.

        “I had a talk with myself a year ago,” she says, “and said, "Peggy, you can either stay home and feel sorry for yourself, or you can go out and have some fun.'

        “A couple of times, I've gone to parties and my kids have been there. They were absolutely delighted.”

        She's close to her children, two of whom live in Cincinnati. She often attends her grandchildren's swim meets and soccer matches. But she values her independence, too. She's not afraid to go places alone.

        Before graduating from the University of Michigan, she attended Mills College in Oakland, Calif. When the school held a reunion a few weeks ago, Peggy returned for the first time in 52 years.

        “I have to admit that when I was packing, I had some anxieties — will I know anybody? And I said to myself, "When you were 18 you got on a train and it took you three days to get there. Now you're 72, and you can jolly well get on an airplane.' ”

        She spent four days on campus renewing acquaintances. “A marvelous experience,” she says. “The years melted away.”

        There's much more to do. Next summer she'll visit a niece who lives in Norway. Peggy will take along her two oldest granddaughters, who will be 10 and 11.

        Peggy, former chairwoman of the YMCA of Greater Cincinnati, believes it's important to exercise the mind, as well as the body. So she bought a computer and took some lessons. She's now experimenting with online purchases of music and books.

        “It's been my new challenge,” she says.

        Her new life includes other changes, some subtle. She still attends the same church, but parks her car in a different spot than her husband once did. She sits in a different pew, too.

        She misses Bill terribly. Back home, after her walk, she flips through pages of a keepsake album she created to keep his memory alive.

        She thinks he might be envious of the opportunities she has to enjoy life. Also, “proud to know that I have been able to move ahead.

        “I hope if I talk to you six months or a year from now, I can tell you something else I've tried,” she says. “If I can keep learning and experimenting, then I'm growing.”

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