The Plain Language of Love and Loss: A Quaker Memoir

Acknowledgments

ix Acknowledgments Many people lived through the early events of this story and I am grateful to all of them for their generosity and frankness , but mostly for their willingness to revisit a difficult time in all of our lives. Everything in this memoir is as true as I, or others, can remember it. All names are real, although I have used one person’s chosen name. I would like to thank the former and current members of Bryn Gweled Homesteads who shared their memories or who read early drafts: David Polster and his mother, Betty; Alice Maxfield and Nelson Camp; Susan and Bill Maxfield; Betsy Crofts; Alison Bass; Noel Hill. I would like to thank my brother’s school friends for their memories and honesty—Robert Stahl; Paul Seelig, Jr., and his father, the late Paul Seelig, Sr.; John Fesmire; John Stevenson; Rocky Tinari. I would like to thank my cousins—Thompsons, Bronners, and Plaisteds, as well as friends Tony McQuail and his mother, Ginny, for their memories and insight. I would like to thank my husband, Bill, and my boys, Pete, Sam, and Max—who did not ask to have a wife or mother who wrote publicly about them, but who accepted their roles in this story with grace. I would like to thank my sister, Daphne, the one person in the world who has walked beside me every step of this story, for which I am grateful each day. I am also grateful to the many readers whose insight and suggestions helped this manuscript evolve: Michael Ames, Tracy Breton,  Kris Dahl, Jody Lisberger, Andrew Blauner, Ladette Randolph, Kristen Rowley, Michael Bibby, Catherine Imbriglio, Jim Blight, and Janet Lang. Finally, I am eternally grateful to Clair Willcox and his reader at the University of Missouri Press for deciding to take a chance on this story. And I thank the excellent staff of the UMP for shepherding this story where it needed to go. Acknowledgments The Plain Language of Love and Loss ...