PASSAGES

Judy and I were watching "The Sound of Music" on television tonight and she reminded me that she watched it with my father in our home in Phoenix at a time I was covering (as a news person) the Republican National Convention in Detroit.

That was in 1980.

A night or two later my father died in his sleep.

So it's a bittersweet memory for her.

And then, yesterday afternoon, we got a phone call telling us that an old friend from our Mexico days had died.

She was Betty Houser and never a better friend had I than she.

This is the only picture I could find though I know I have others somewhere.

It was taken at a chili festival in Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico back in the 1980's.

She was a very close friend of my good friend, Walter Nixon, from those days.

Betty moved around a lot.

She came to Prescott and then to Chino Valley for awhile after we all came back from Mexico.

She helped us put our Prescott Valley bookstore together, finishing boards for the many bookshelves back in the 1990's.

Betty was what I called a Yellow Dog Democrat, meaning she'd vote for a Democrat even if they had to run a yellow dog on the ticket.

In the last twenty years or so she lived in Olympia, Washington.

We'd talk on the telephone once or twice a year, usually about politics.

Her daughter told me yesterday that she was delighted by the recent Democratic win in Alabama.

She told her daughter she'd had a wonderful life but she was tired and ready to move on.

She died in her sleep, only weeks from her 93rd birthday.

I'll miss her.