John's sister Ginny died last night. I had known her since our sophomore year at Brown University, and we became good friends taking history courses together and playing the card game Spite and Malice in our spare time. A few years after our graduation she orchestrated a visit for the two of us to Richmond where John was living. The purpose was ostensibly to visit Colonial Williamsburg, but all along she knew John and I would be a perfect match, and by the following Christmas we were engaged.
You can see Ginny here with John on a visit we made to her home in Portland, Maine. She did not like having her picture taken so this was a surreptitious shot. Ginny's last years were very difficult. She was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and her humanity gradually slipped away. Her husband Jack cared for her faithfully through what must have been very dark days. She was one of the brightest, funniest and most caring people I have known, and I can still hear her quiet laugh bubbling up. She will be missed but I know she is in a better place.
