I have told the story many times of threatening to murder you when we were pre-teens — and meaning it! I love to tell stories and that’s probably an exaggeration - but then I’m in my sixtieth year and memories grow dim. I always follow that recollection with the fact of how dear to me you became as we grew older. Especially so during the two years our college careers overlapped. You typed my papers, for heaven’s sake!!! How many little sisters would do that?

And when you married Ron he became a brother. How I enjoyed visiting with two such starry-eyed newlyweds and cooking out or playing Jeopardy. (For you youngsters out there, this was pre-Alex Trebek!!)

Then Sheila and I were married and you accepted her as a sister. She and I were living in a remote log cabin near Chubbtown. We returned from Tallahassee one New Year’s Eve and had just gotten in the door when we got the call that a Larisa had been born! We just got right back in the car and headed to Atlanta. Again I had vicarious joy in watching her wrap you two around her fingers, and as she did her grandmother and Grandshaw (he didn’t have that name yet), … and Sheila, and me.
I was honored to get phone calls from Larisa or Joey, as they went through elementary school, for help with a project or homework. That certainly puffed up my ego.

I remember crawling around your yard in Charlotte pulling up poison ivy — and a cookout in the backyard and good fellowship with the four of you. Joey and Larisa were having a ball with a fort Ron had built for them. I ended up with a silver-dollar-sized spot of poison-ivy reaction on my arm - the only reaction to the weed I’ve ever suffered.

And I am so thankful for that last get-together with Daddy that you and Ron hosted. (I can’t even type those words without tearing up.)

Enough! I didn’t mean to write an autobiography here!

I still cherish your friendship and love. Thanks for this post and the pics!