November 13, 2013. Harper, Texas. Friends.

I have been blessed with good friends.  This is as true when I was growing up as it is today.  And I am fortunate to have kept the friends over the years, which when you move is not an easy feat.  Perhaps my interest in organizing  has made it feasible.   At our 55th, friends attended from every era of my life.   But despite all my efforts,  good friends got lost and I don't know why.

Our friend Sharon Berry worked with us at the Salvation Army camp just outside of Boston in 1961.   She was a good friend and we had a great summer together and even almost got her in trouble!!   For many years we kept in touch.  She became a Salvation Army Officer and we kept in touch.  Now she is lost to me.  She played trombone and once she and I played a trombone duet, she on her trombone and me on the comb.   It was a duet my brother played and I had heard him practice so often that I knew every note.    I would have liked to see her at the 55th.

Lenore Ittman is another good friend I have lost.   She and her husband Bev lived in Galveston, he as a city planner and Lenore a teacher in the children's Psychiatric ward at the University, which was where we met.  I worked there too.   Their 3 children were adolescents and we had no children so we were both foot loose and fancy free.  For three years we had a great time, from 1964 to 1967, and then they moved to Michigan.  We visited them and talked with them on the phone for many years.   Bev called to tell Ken that he was not dying from lung but from pancreatic cancer and he did.  Lenore went on to complete her PhD in education.  All three children are with an MD. or PhD or both.  But now I have lost her, despite my efforts.

And there are others too.  I wonder why.