The Watts Girls

Betty Ann on the left, Linda Sue on the right and their mother, Grace in the middle, taken sometime in the early 1960s somewhere in Illinois.

Grace was the kind of person who looked everyone straight in the eye and said exactly what she thought -- whether they wanted to hear it or not -- and she did it with a smile that you couldn't resist. It was that smile that carried her everywhere.

The story of the relationship between the Watts family and mine is a tale now lost at sea -- but the memories I have of spending countless hours watching our parents play bridge, or a summer working on the farm in Dallas City or curling up in sleeping bags in front of their fireplace during the ice storm of 1959 (or was it 1960) will always linger in the warm recesses of my mind's eye.

Thanks for everything Grace -- I'm sorry I didn't say it sooner.

But hey! I suspect you and Bill, Mom and Dad are all sitting around the card table, sipping Canadian Club (with water of course), playing bridge, and laughing at the follies of the world while Linda smiles on holding Heinz (as in Heinz 57) ever closer. . . .