My friend the Distinguished Alumni and Humanitarian

I got an email and several letters from Clarke College urging me to nominate someone from my class (1983) for the Distinguished Humanitarian Alumni Award. Muff immediately sprung to mind, and I found myself recalling all the things she'd done her whole life to help others.
When we were in college, Muff regularly helped me by typing my term papers and running lines with me for the shows I was in. Once she graduated, she worked as a nanny to help a family raise their children...she was an expert at this since she often told me she felt she'd raised her three younger brothers, Michael Bear and Danny. She also told me time and again that she worked not only for herself, but to help her mother and siblings financially whenever needed. Then she adopted a child in a third world country and raised her from childhood to adulthood with monthly donations and care packages or extra checks for various holidays and celebrations. This, when she often had to skimp on things for herself. This past year Muff adopted a platoon of soldiers in Iraq and wrote each of them letters every week. She sent them care packages and included poems and humorous books that she felt would keep their spirits up. She was always lending a hand with the folks at the Marshalltown Library, and she regularly babysat her nieces and nephews and her nieces new son. She was a humble and kind person who was generous with her time and money and whatever else she had that she felt you might need. So I sent in the forms, the Clarke alumni gal asked for more information, so I asked her brother Michael for more info, which he got from BJ and Mrs Jean Russell Larson, Muffs mom, and all was sent in to Clarke. The alumni gal told me that they'd never tried to give a posthumous alumni award before, so she wasn't surprised when the committee picked two living people to give the awards to. I felt terrible about it, though they told me they'd have Muffs name in the booklet of nominees at the presidents dinner during homecoming, but I somehow felt that I'd let my friend down. I wrote and apologised to Muffs brother Michael and he hasn't written me back, so I'm afraid that the Parks-Larson clan isn't too happy with me either. That makes me terribly sad, because I love them all dearly.

I did do something the other day that I think Muff would have heartily approved of. During my volunteer hours at the Maple Valley Library (I work on the book cart, doing intake of donated books and then getting them priced and onto the cart) I had to go through some boxes of aged books, most of which looked like they were just swept into boxes after the passing of some elderly parson or priest. Another guild member was helping me, and figured that many of these really old books would never sell on the cart, so she wanted them tossed into the recycle bin.
I couldn't bear the sight of the Bobsey Twins hitting the dumpster, nor could I bear to see an old turn of the century manual of "Necessary Knowledge" go to waste. And then there was a book of poetry that I just could not pass up. It contained a poem that I know poem Muff would love (she was fond of Robert Louis Stevenson). I am sure she would also have appreciated me rescuing those 5 books that I brought home from an untimely demise.

"The infinite shining heavens
Rose and I saw in the night,
Uncountable angel stars
Showering sorrow and light

I saw them distant as heaven
Dumb and shining and dead
And the idle stars of the night
Were dearer to me than bread.

Night after night in my sorrow,
The stars stood over the sea
Til Lo! I looked in the dusk
And a star had come down to me."

Robert Louis Stevenson