Anna was so important to me at different times in my life – from my stay with the family in Linton in 1971 through our newlywed trip to North Wales in 1978 and on to later visits in Oxford, Seattle and Maine. Her generosity to me included adding me to her family. She seemed to welcome everyone: neighbors, friends, and friends of friends. Bill and Sam were easily folded into the mix, like the amazing apple crumble she would bake (using scales) and serve with cream. She had a way of making you feel important and heard whoever you were.

She possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of a variety of things, nature, music, geology, literature, architecture and food. She is the only woman I knew to travel with a spice kit. We’ll always remember her and Robert roaming through the Pike Place Market in Seattle with gay abandon selecting clams, mussels, oysters, Turkish baked goods, fiddlehead ferns, loaves of bread and local wine. Bill, Sam and I had been to the Market many times, carefully selecting a few things but I’ll never forget the air of festivity with food overflowing from the bags to be cooked at our house.

She’s also the only woman I knew to get out of the van she was driving in the middle of traffic to turn something under the hood to re-start it just assuming that everyone would avoid her.

When we last saw her in Maine she was so happy to eat the blueberry pancakes that Sam was making. She just beamed as he kept heaping them on her plate. A radiant smile, a rare inner and outer beauty, and an ability to connect with others emotionally as well as intellectually were her trademark.

We loved her. We miss her. 

Laura

To: From Ferg