Friendship has endured for eight decades

By Margaret Saul, Grants Pass, Ore.

“However, the little girl I met when I was 3 years old, and she was 1, has had more impact on my life than any other. No one has been so enduring, so inspiring, or so special as Alice.”

I was always kind of a loner, having been an only child and being with adults most of the time. I didn’t make friends easily with my peers. When I look back at my life, I realize that I always had just one good friend at each different point in my life.

In my first few years of school, my neighbor Mary Sue was special. Then we moved, and Joan became my new best friend. I’m still in touch with Joan all these years later. The same is true of my neighbor Helen, who was my best friend in high school. In college, Sally came into my life. Then, while my children were growing up, Val was there. I’ve had some good friends since then, too, especially Ann and Harriet. And all of these old friends are still dear to me.

However, the little girl I met when I was 3 years old, and she was 1, has had more impact on my life than any other. No one has been so enduring, so inspiring, or so special as Alice.

My parents and I had moved from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles, and after living in a couple of apartments, we moved into a duplex owned by Alice’s parents. They lived with their three daughters in a nice house behind the two units in front.

I guess they kind of adopted us and became our California family. My mother had six siblings who lived with their families in West Virginia, and Dad had two siblings in Washington, but nobody in the West. So Alice and I became playmates. The most fun of all was when her two older sisters, Helen and Edith, would dress us up, and we would put on plays for our parents. Helen and Edith were 9 and 7 at the time, and I thought it was wonderful that Alice would share her sisters with me. For years, we spent every holiday with them. And when Dad bought a car, we would take Alice’s family with us on the weekends and go to the beach or to a wonderful park called Pop’s Willow Lake.

As the years went on, we moved again, but we always stayed in touch. The first wedding I attended was Helen’s, and the first funeral was that of Alice’s father.

Alice and I both married during World War II. Her husband was in the Navy, and mine was in the Army Air Force. We saw each other at times, and we renewed our family friendship when everyone was home again.

I had five children – three boys and two girls – and Alice had two boys. Her two boys are the same age as my two oldest. When I had my girls, she kind of adopted them, since she had none of her own. We always saw each other, even after Alice and her family moved to Sedona, Ariz. When we took trips across the country, my husband and I would always stop and stay with Alice and her husband. Later, both of our husbands died – within three months of each other – and we were alone.

It was more difficult, but we still kept in touch. I visited her in Arizona for two weeks once, and she came to California once, and we took a trip up the coast together. Later, we had a wonderful trip to Mazatlan, Mexico, with her son and daughter-in-law. Now we both have computers and can write more easily. I also keep in touch with Helen and Edith, who both live in Pennsylvania.

By this time, Alice had become quite a famous painter in her area, and I was still trying to publish my articles and poems. I decided I was going to write a book of poems about our friendship, from childhood through adulthood, and Alice agreed to illustrate it. We called it “Gifts of God.” We later did another one, “More Gifts of God.” We self-published them and gave them to close friends and relatives.

Alice and I still keep in touch by e-mail and telephone, and we still love each other dearly, after almost 80 years. We’ve been rich and poor, we’ve been sick and healthy, and we’ve been happy and sad. We’ve had problems with our children, but luckily they all turned out to be successful, happy adults. Through it all, we’ve lived it together. She will forever be my dearest friend.

Here is one of the poems I wrote.