Laura could catch your eye in an instant. From the minute she walked into a room or left it, the eyes of people followed her. Her blond hair was natural, as were her smiles. Once you saw the face you were captivated. Laura had it all. She walked with grace, her smile could melt a frown in an instant, and her laughter was like a melody you could hum for hours after seeing and hearing her. Her problem was that she wasn’t very smart or so I thought.
From the minute I saw her until her death, I worshiped her. We met in the sixth grade. I was assigned a seat right next to her. My parents and I had just moved here from Seattle. Laura turned to me with a smile, but frowned a second later. She had noticed a dog hair on my jacket.
“What’s that?” she asked and I responded. I told her about my dogs and she wanted to see them. We were the best of friends through high school and then got married midway through college. She gave birth to twin girls. We both graduated together. Laura rarely had the answers to anything she was asked, but she did have the questions. She would ask away continually until the answers made sense to her and the others around her.
The first thing she did after graduation was to run for mayor. Again what she did was ask questions. She would keep people digging for an answer until they made common sense to her and any others who asked her. She won in a runaway election. When people wrote to her asking questions, she got people together, including me, and we all discussed it.
At a Laura gathering she would ask questions until well past closing time or even bed time. It didn’t matter to her. Oppositions never succeeded, but their queries were often incorporated into facts and beliefs. When something didn’t make sense to Laura, she kept after the questions until she and her team of followers agreed on the content.
My favorite comment by Laura was “You don’t have to be rude to be right.” People loved her and those that didn’t know her thought she was the smartest person in the county . . . or the state . . . or the world. Our twin girls were smart as a whip and never gave up on anything they thought was interesting. A couple of years later they teamed up together and with a throw of the dice, Alice became mayor, while Jennifer became the second in command. The work that they did sealed the deal and our little town became one of most sought after places in the state for settling down and raising a family.
Laura’s favorite comment when asked about race was “A checkered flag makes the winner no matter the color.” Even after Laura and the years have passed, I can still hear Laura through the tears in my eyes.
