My mom would have been 88 today. Mary Grace Adrian Bourque Borders was born on January 26, 1930 in Boston, and grew up in Concord, N.H. She studied in Boston at Massachusetts General Hospital and became a registered nurse. Mom met our dad in Boston, when his naval destroyer, the U.S.S. Norris was docked at the shipyard for repairs. They married in 1953. After my dad left the Navy, they moved back to N.H. and bought a small house in Allenstown, N.H., about five miles from Concord.
Everyone called her Mickey, a nickname she acquired in nursing school, though she was always vague on the details....
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Note: I was asked to recount my memories of Victor B. Fain, long-time editor and publisher of The Daily Sentinel in Nacogdoches. Mr. Fain was inducted into the Texas Press Association Hall of Fame at the mid-winter conference going on this weekend in Galveston. So I decided to expand those remarks into today’s offering.
I was working as a dogcatcher for the City of Nacogdoches in 1977 during my final semester at Stephen F. Austin State University, a depressing job I was desperate to escape when I spied the ad in the Sentinel’s classified pages: Part-time position as lithographer at The Daily...
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I am sitting in the Margaret Estes Library on LeTourneau University’s campus on a Thursday morning. This is where I hibernate every other Thursday when the housekeeper comes in to clean house. Yasmin is an amazing housekeeper, and all humans and animals vacate the premises while she performs her magic. Sam and Rosie are dropped at the Canine Beauty Shop to be bathed. Tater and Tot, the now-grown cats, spend the day outside. My Beautiful Mystery Companion and daughter Abbie are also on campus, mom teaching, daughter learning.
The library’s namesake, Margaret Estes, became publisher of the Longview...
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For our annual Christmas lunch, I assured my Beautiful Mystery Companion that daughter Mere, in for a visit, and I would handle the bulk of the cooking duties and give her a break. I bought smoked turkey and pulled pork from the brewpub/restaurant that Mere and her husband, Matt, own in Houston. She went to Hebert’s in Houston (still mourning that the local store closed) and brought several tubs of jalapeño crawfish dressing. My BMC bought a ham, and would cook green beans, while I would handle the mashed potatoes. Mere would make the salad.
My BMC prepared the ham the day before to lessen...
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