Twenty-nine years and six weeks ago, my husband and I chose to be married by our hero, Jerry Buchmeyer, the federal judge who on Aug. 17, 1982, decriminalized love between same-sex couples in Texas in the case known as Baker v. Wade. Buchmeyer’s ruling was way ahead of its time: The Fifth Circuit Court of…
Kelly and Portia are home, awaiting our return. We’re in Woodbury, New Jersey, my hometown, 1,700 miles, a cultural divide and a three-day drive from San Antonio. I’m going through my Dad’s remarkable photos, negatives, slides, and prints. Life here is like a combination of Groundhog Day, with familial behavior patterns in a never-changing loop,…
Joe Lucas was a gregarious iconoclast, an uncompromising defender of civil liberties and human rights and a passionate Atheist, preaching to all who would listen. He was born on Jan. 19, 1933, to Anna Kathryn Thaidigsman and Joseph Biddle Lucas in the Riverside, New Jersey, home built in the 1890s by his German immigrant grandparents.…
I struggle to write my Dad’s obit. And then I rewrite it. And rewrite it again. Where in the world to start? My Dad taught me to read before I entered Kindergarden, he taught me to be a photographer, how to build and fly radio control model airplanes, how to fish, how to paddle a canoe…
I used to get flashbacks every August. The aching sadness would start to swallow me on the anniversary of the Aug. 2, 1985 crash of Delta Airlines Flight 191 in Dallas, followed by another collective sob on the anniversary of the Aug. 16, 1987 crash of Phoenix-bound Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in Detroit. As a…
The last thing I wanted was to own and drive a minivan — a gold Dodge Caravan that looks identical to its two million or so brethren on the highway and in every parking lot in town. But it was what I needed. Four years and a few weeks ago when we bought the van,…
I’ve never been afraid to go places few women have gone before, and to take names and kick butt. Thanks to my father, I learned to rebuild the engine in a 1964 Dodge Dart so I had a car to drive in 1974. (I named it Rocinante and aimed it at windmills.) I won’t reiterate…
Here’s what I wrote to them tonight after I found out from my dad that Caremark CVS has delayed my mom’s cancer medicine. They didn’t say why or what for. No explanation, just no delivery to the drugs that will help keep her alive – drugs to keep her white blood cells going. What in…
My mom has always been our clan’s chief information hunter and learner. That is, until last week, when she was diagnosed with a rare cancer: Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia. Mom was a medical research librarian – someone who delighted in being a generous resource for journalists like me. I remember her describing the day in 1981 or…
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