I never knew my mother, but I know some things about her. I know she liked to stay in touch because she often wrote long letters to her sisters and her friends. I know she was very smart as she was admitted to Creighton when that was a rarity for women. I know she was committed to her faith and family, giving up her college to marry and raise her family.

I know she must have loved my father and her children deeply because she is missed still. I also know she died young because medicine was not what it is now and time got away while she sickened. But I also know my father was with her and that his heart was broken by her death. I was only about twenty months old.

I know that there must be parts of me that come from her, at least it makes me feel closer to her thinking that. Her sisters and brother, my two aunts and uncle, kept her alive for us. They have the letters and pictures she sent and the stories they remember and our lives are the richer, having them.