Rough Ruoff, Pirate Fighter

Her prominence in university circles has eclipsed LaVonne's distinguished prior career. She is notoriously modest, and doesn't bring it up any longer, but people who care about her need to know her as I do, when we were in the navy together. It was many years ago, when we were young, ambitious, and eager to see the world. I was an ensign doing submarine reconnaissance; she was the captain of the USS frigate Destiny and was leading the campaign to clear the Mississippi of river pirates. We met at a tattoo parlor in Biloxi. I was crossing my t's and dotting my i's; she was getting a dagger on her shoulder for sinking yet another scurvy pirate boat. I couldn't help noticing all those daggers. I made some joke about a knife in her back, and she turned to me with that cool look of hers and said I should see where she packed her pistols. We became instant friends. For the next month I used my connections in underwater surveillance to help her get the jump on those dirty pirates, and she kept getting more daggers. When she had served her time and ran out of room for daggers, the navy was desperate to keep her and offered her an eye patch and extra rum, but she said no and walked away, toward the career now better known and no less perilous. You can toast her for her scholarship and celebrate what she's done to mentor the young; you can salute her for her courage and praise her stamina, but I'll tell you, the river pirates remember Rough Ruoff for her dead-eye aim with a depth charge and her flawless verb-subject agreement. I remember her dunking pirates like dumplings, saying, "You can tell they're done when the skin starts to flake." What a woman. They don't make 'em like LaVonne any more.