LUCIE IN THE SKY

Lucie Jensen stepped through the Big Window yesterday. She was more than 100 years old and clear of mind when I last saw her. (There is hope for us to remain lucid!) Lucie was at the center of the Healdsburg current affairs discussion group, chaired by Tom Belton. She had started out as a Kansas Republican, daughter in a banking family, but at some early point, dismayed by the meanness in her party, she became a New Deal Democrat, a common sense sllghtly-left-of-center voter and columnist. She wrote a column for the local weekly, a column that was often the reason to buy the newspaper. For several recent years she handled the hospitality for the town's Democratic club. I don't seem able to get her essence down in words. Lucie was a lady--by that I mean most people automatically respected her. She married three times. One of her husbands had hit her (end of marriage). Her favorite husband, she told us once, was the last, Stan, a machinist, because he was romantic. Lucie worked as a teacher, worked with the most backward learners, worked with them as individuals. Ah, she was a major touchstone in the lives of so many of us.