5.07.2005

thanks for the memories

Cheryl McCall called me today. It’s her 55th birthday, and she says it is her last. She has a very aggressive cancer of everything—bones, lungs, brain, lymph nodes, liver. She was running her law office and walking two miles a day three weeks ago; now she is in bed, using a walker to get to the bathroom. She doesn’t have long, and she has a daughter, Jessie, who is 16. Cheryl asked me to spread the word and request memories, anecdotes of her years as a young turk (or termegant?) journalist. Jessie never knew her mother as anything but a lawyer in a small town in California. Cheryl wants to leave her reminiscences of the other part of her life—the argumentative, racy, out-there, New York babe we knew. (Sexy is OK; she requests, however, that, given the target age group, we edit out any drug-use references.)
Please e-mail your thoughts to Cheryl at home. She's a pistol.

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