Estelle

When I was about 9 or 10 my Nana took me to downtown San Diego to the apartment of a friend of hers named Estelle. It was in a high-rise apartment building (high-rise for the 50's) and I was very excited to go with her. Estelle gave me a book--it was a paperback book about astronomy and she had written "To little Linda with stars in her eyes". I loved that book and had it for many years--and I began a lifelong love of astronomy--heavenly objects in general. In fact I took astronomy many years later as a general education requirement, and nearly changed my major--I still loved it--I really had a knack for it--I had a high 90's average! I was taking evening classes at BYU during the fall semester in 1975 when Scott died--I took Eric to class with me one evening when we were going up to the observatory. I was VERY pregnant (it was just a few weeks before Jared was born) and the whole class held its collective breath while I climbed up the ladder and onto the roof. Eric looked at the moon and proceeded to go to every person in the class and told them, "Have you seen the moon? You need to look at the moon, you think it's smooth, but it's rough--you need to look at it!" He was so excited--everyone thought he was very cute (well he was, of course.) Back to Estelle--it turned out she was the mother of "Bill", the guy who started Alcoholics Anonymous, and quite acomplished in her own right. Nana really liked that lady. I remember a few years later when she died, Nana told me about it and wondered if I remembered her. I showed her the book--by then very worn and bent up--it made her happy--Nana was very big on self-improvement, studying whatever she was interested in, and felt that it was the duty of people to keep learning all their life--she believed way back then that if you keep your brain really active, you can put off "getting senile". The funny thing is, first we become our mother--I have gone past that and am actually becoming my grandmother. Daddy brought me a picture of Grammy taken when she was about 44 --wow! About the age of Amy (dubdub). Amazing. As soon as I get to it, I'll scan and post on MyFamily, and also photoshop.com.