Jo Hughes (friends for 49 years), me, Linda Lee Johnson (friends for 39 years), on

February 29, 2004, Ian's and my Spiritual Marriage Celebration. Linda Lee had

just beaten cancer and her hair was just starting to grow back. 

Same day, Jo and me.

A friend is someone who leaves you with all your freedom intact, but who, by what [s]he thinks of you, requires you to be fully who you are. --John L'Heureux

Mary Still and Peggy Van Patten, two friends who got together backstage at the Orpheum Theatre, where Mary was dressing wigs for Wicked.

More to

come.

A Different Kind of Friendship

Pauli Murray was one of the  little known leaders of the Civil Rights movement from the 1920s to the 1950s. She later went on to work in the US Justice Department and to be a co-fiounder of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Sne initiated correspondence with Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1930s. The following is from Defying Dixie, by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, a thoroughly researched and richly detailed account of the radical roots of the American Civil Rights Movement.

Murray and Roosevelt cultivated a friendship based on their differences--"race," age, and temperament-- rather than on their similarities. ER used Murray to hear what "Negroes" were thinking, and Murray used ER to tell the administration what "Negroes" were thinking. ER used Murray to divine the future, but Murray used ER to realize her futire. ER warned Murray to slow down and criticized her methods; Murray warned ER to speed up and criticized her methods.  . . .  Recalling her 1939 meeting with ER, Murray wrote that "She was positively beautiful in our interview--a glow such as I've never seen." . . . Each woman  recognized and treasured the other's pilgrim soul.

Last updated: July 7, 2011