My bucket list is not only complete, my bucket runneth over. My portrait of the Beloved Woman Who Shared My Name now hangs in the Wellstar School of Nursing at Kennesaw State University, where she received her degree at the age of 45. That’s correct. At a time when most of her friends were winding down, she was just getting wound up.
Some of you are familiar with her story, but as a personal privilege, may I share it again? We met in high school. She was a member of the National Honor Society and was voted Most Dignified by her high school classmates. I didn’t do anything noteworthy except graduate.
In one of the stereotypical cruelties of those times, I headed off to college totally unprepared and unqualified. She went to work as a secretary, as young women of that time were expected to do. It should have been the other way around…