When U.S. Army Paratrooper Tony Peperis walked into the Bowling Green drug store where Nell Kirby worked as a teenager, she never dreamed she’d marry the Greek boy from Massachusetts.

But the young man kept coming in to talk to her. And soon, Kirby was deep in love.

At 18, she and Peperis married. It wasn’t what she or her parents expected.

&#8220I think they would have liked me to marry someone from the South,” Nell Peperis said from her Bowling Green home last week. &#8220Then, when I went up there (to Massachusetts), his family felt the same way about me. They didn’t marry other people. They married a Greek boy or a girl and that’s the way it was.”

But Tony and Nell Peperis were happy together and got along well with each other’s families.

They moved to Massachusetts, where they had four children and Tony ran a cocktail lounge.

Nell Peperis became Greek Orthodox.

In the 1970s, the family moved to Bowling Green and ran a furniture refinishing business called Dip & Strip.

Tony dreamed of living up north again someday.

He missed the snow and the cold winters of New England.

Nell Peperis said &#8220when you retire we’ll go home.”

But in 1983, Tony died and Nell Peperis was devastated.

Alone, she could not keep their business open, so she turned to her talent – painting – for income.

Since then, Peperis has taught art in her home, and from time to time, at Memphis Marsha’s Art Gallery and Classes, or for Community Education and children in the Kelly Autism Program at Western Kentucky University.

She’s also created and sold many artworks that hang in businesses, homes and exhibits.

Last week, Peperis stood in her home art studio, in front of a painting of a man and woman walking away, down a long, snow-covered road. Bare-limbed trees hang over their heads.

&#8220This is my therapy painting,” she said. &#8220It took me five years after my husband died. It’s called ‘The Journey.’ I would paint and cry and paint and cry.”

In it, the man is at home in the snow she said.

Now 70, Peperis was born in Murray.

Her mother was the now late Dell Creekmur Kirby, who was a teacher before marrying.

Her father farmed some and did other jobs.

&#8220He raised pedigreed foxhounds,” Peperis said.

Peperis was raised with five siblings – Mary Virginia Payne, Irene Jones and Bob Kirby, all of Bowling Green, and the late J.C. and Joseph Kirby.

As a child, Peperis moved with her family to Warren County, and through the years attended an old school at Greenwood, 11th Street School, College Street School, Bowling Green Junior High and Bowling Green High School.

Through it all, she created art.

&#8220But I really didn’t know what it was,” she said. &#8220I amused myself by making things.”

In high school, Peperis was encouraged in her talent by her art teacher, Reed Potter, and after marrying, she studied art at the Carl Owen School of Art in Massachusetts.

&#8220I had a commercial art course,” Peperis said, &#8220and I went back to Western (to study) when we moved back here.”

While Peperis only took classes part-time at Western, she hoped to get a degree in art therapy somewhere.

&#8220Then, my husband died and it was impossible for me to follow that direction,” Peperis said. &#8220But I feel I have worked with children just the same.”

She talked of one child who came to her classes from a tragic background.

At first, &#8220he wouldn’t talk to me,” Peperis said, &#8220so I kept talking to him and showing him how to do his artwork.”

Gradually, the boy began to warm up and &#8220one day, he came to class and he brought me a rose,” Peperis said.

Over time, the boy made other kind gestures.

&#8220He came out of his shell,” Peperis said, &#8220and would paint and draw. When I saw that happen with a child, I knew I was doing the right thing.”

Now, she keeps photos of her students in albums in her studio.

She also keeps things they’ve made for her.

&#8220Art can touch children because it’s something wonderful,” Peperis said. &#8220If you encourage them, they bloom with it.”

But art isn’t all that’s good in her life.

She’s very proud of her children, Steve Peperis of Massachusetts, Diane Brignardello of Nashville, Denise Oliver of Hadley and Donna Brown of Bowling Green.

And she’s still very close with her siblings.

&#8220Once a month – we try to stick to once a month – we go to each other’s home for dinner,” Peperis said.

Yesterday, her siblings gathered at her home, where many pieces of her art hang.

One of the works is of a Greek woman with flowers. Another is a print of the Guthrie Bell Tower at WKU. The original watercolor of the tower was commissioned by Peperis’ brother Bob for his friend Lowell Guthrie, who had the tower built in memory of veterans.

Bob Kirby was impressed with the piece.

&#8220There’s a lot of detail in it,” he said. &#8220That’s what amazes me. You’ve almost got to be half engineer to draw something like that.”

Kirby said he can &#8220understand” his sister’s work, which includes many landscape and flower paintings.

Peg Truman, a local artist who has known Peperis for years, said Peperis’ art is &#8220universally appealing.”

&#8220Her paintings are realistic but I’d say they’re whimsical, very colorful,” Truman said.

And they’re painted by someone Truman calls sweet, compassionate and energetic.

But Peperis, who has a dog named Michelangelo, is modest about herself and her art.

She says both sides of her family were artistic. An aunt wrote books and loved to paint. Her father enjoyed wood carving.

&#8220You know, I inherited the talent, that strain or whatever, and I couldn’t fight it, she said.