-I feel a certain kinship with Aunt Shirley because I was born on her 19th birthday.

-Aunt Shirley loved the outdoors. At the duplex she would wake up each morning, go to the living room, look out the window and say, She is out today. (Mt. Baker). Both Aunt Shirley & Uncle Bill loved Mt. Baker and took me hiking to the glaciers often.

-Aunt Shirley was a wonderful cook. Made scrumptious fruit cake at Christmas (large nuts, large fruits and liquor). I never liked fruit cake but loved hers. She always cooked w/fresh tasty & healthy ingredients. For years, our Dad picked out hickory nuts & sent Aunt Shirley a jar full. She absolutely cherished them, & made a luscious white cake full of nuts.

-Aunt Shirley was a beautiful lady, both inside and out whom I remember meticulously dressed in a red outfit w/ matching red lipstick and her dark brown hair, beautiful large eyes with eye lashes crimped perfectly. My last visit to Aunt Shirley, I wore a yellow & black outfit. She commented on each item, and then pulled out a paper she had saved for years that Natalie Wood wrote, It is not what you wear, but how you put things together that count. Aunt Shirley reminisced growing up in Iowa, dating Bill, getting married, their drug store, working in a dental office, and their many travels.

-Aunt Shirley spent hours doing word search puzzles to keep her mind young. Believe me, her mind was sharp. She had a large difficult book with crooked word searches, which is where the letters go up, down, and diagonal to form the words.

-I will miss my phone calls with Aunt Shirley. We often talked so very long that her arm would ache re: news, TV shows, baseball/Seattle Mariners, football/Seahawks, health issues, and the people at The Willows. Aunt Shirley & Uncle Bill both loved living at The Willows.

-I received an email from the Willows Manager, Viki who wrote, We loved both of them, she will be missed around here, such a fixture of The Willows.