Randall Williams

Post date: May 8, 2013 4:51:24 AM

My first sight of Jeannie Graetz left a literally negative impression. There she was, a small black figure against a white background, rather one-dimensional, sort of cold, actually. Of course, that's what you get in a piece of microfilm negative. I was very pleased to meet her in real life some twenty years afterwards and learn that this petite woman was warm, charming, quite multi-dimensional, and far more powerful than the dynamite she had been sweeping up after in the news photograph I saw on microfilm in the state archives. I admired Jeannie (and Bob, of course) from afar for years. It's dangerous to meet one's heroes because they sometimes turn out to be less admirable and less likable than you had imagined. But with Jeannie, what you got was even better than what you expected, and I have been blessed to work with her and to live near her and to visit in her home and her in mine over the past decade and a half. What an amazing life she has led. What an amazing woman she is. How do we hope to live up to her example?