My memories of Bea are really the memories of my life -- at least the happiest part of it. I met her at a dance "one enchanted evening across crowded room" as the beautiful Hammerstein lyrics put it. She was so chic and beautiful, at 37, that my heart was in my shoes with fear as I made my way through a circle of men
around her and asked for a dance. I was astounded when she accepted, and she continued to astound me for the next 35 years with her wit, her talent, her fidelity to her ideas and her passions -- drama, the environment and the need to protect it, her belief in the rights and dignity of women and of minorities -- her intelligence and warmth, and yet what I remember best were her femininity, her ready laugh,
and her love.
We built a good life together, and when cancer struck we fought that battle together, and her courage in adversity became another reason to love her. Many of our friends did not even realize the pain she was suffering, for she was never given to complaint or self-pity. She was actually putting the finishing touches on her play "It Had To Be You" as we prepared to go to Stanford Medical for what proved to be her final surgery, and not even the cast of the play realized how she was suffering.
Goodbye, my darling, but not forever. You will always be part of me.
Jack
