My friend Lee was a remarkable woman. She was a professional musician during an age when it was harder for women to succeed. She lived a simple life, but she was always sure of what she wanted. She and Peter had one of the closest relationships I have ever seen. Even though they were very different in some ways, they always respected each other. They didn't travel much but they had a very big view of the world.

Peter was just as remarkable. He was conservative in his habit but liberal in his thinking. He was uncompromising in his standards for what he wanted to achieve in his career. He was NOT gregarious, but he and Lee had a set of loving and dear old friends who were scattered all over the country.

As we grow older, we become more of ourselves. This was also true for Lee. She became more irritated by things that irritated her, more impatient with social graces, and more curious about everything in the world. On the day she went into the nursing home she brought her usual taped morning broadcast of the news from National Public Radio and her newspaper. She went out just the way she had always lived. She insisted that she was not courageous; it was just logically obvious that it was the right time to go.

I knew Lee and Peter for 30 years, and during that time, I heard many stories of their friends and occasionally saw photos from times before I knew them. I read Peter's teenage journals of his camping plans and the actual trips. I read Peter's father's account of the trenches in World War I.

I would like to thank all the people who responded to my notice about Lee. I will be contacting you to get permission to publish some of those words as well. I will be posting more material as time goes on.

I miss both of them, but I miss Lee more acutely because she died more recently and we were extremely close the last few years. I now have much of Lee's art and furniture, so I am reminded of her every day.

Nancy Hildebrandt