The Sad News

Click here to skip to the good news

This has been a difficult year for us. Kitty's mother, Gretchen Munson, passed away from sepsis due to a perforated ulcer. Click here for her obituary in the East Hampton Star (at the bottom of that page). Kitty's brother, Shipley, had a bleeding ulcer and several operations. Steve had prostate cancer. And our senior dog, Ilsa, died at almost 16. All within a few months this past summer. Both Steve and Shipley are doing well now.

Shipley was medically unable to fly to be at his mother’s deathbed, but his son Geddes came and was a stalwart help. Facing the pull-the-plug decision could have been difficult, but Gretchen’s living will made her wishes clear. She never regained full consciousness or spoke but it was clear from her facial expressions that she was aware and could hear us. Kitty used her cellphone to contact all her mother’s closest friends and relatives to let them say goodbye to her.

Kitty’s dad took a fall right before her mother died, and he needed to be hospitalized himself. Sadly, he was taken to a different hospital from Gretchen, but he and Geddes managed to get him transferred. Unfortunately, they arrived a few minutes after she died. Cousin Susan and her husband Tom, a minister, also arrived just after Gretchen passed, and Tom said a lovely prayer with us over mother. An amazing number of Kitty’s family members rallied round to visit with her Dad after Gretchen’s death and to help with the many tasks that had to be done for his relocation to assisted living in Utah. Kitty had to leave Massachusetts prematurely to be with Steve after his diagnosis and for his surgery. So thank you cousin Susan Murrell and husband Tom, cousin Happy Munson and wife Fatima, cousin Frank Dunau, cousin Laura Geisel and husband Kent, son Paul Bethe and fiancé Lindsay Nathan, nephews Geddes and Chase Munson, cousin Mitzi Dunau and husband Norm Sherman, cousin Kagee Hubbard, and cousin Jeannie Luloff.

  The Good News

Kitty's son Paul is getting married in the fall of 2010 in New York City to his lovely Lindsay. Kitty’s Aunt Stasi, her mother’s oldest sister, celebrated her 90th birthday at a party at the family summer home in Wolfboro, New Hampshire. We had a marvelous Christmas Eve turducken dinner with Kitty’s father at Shipley’s wife’s parents’ home in Park City with about 40 extended family members. Larry truly enjoyed his grandchildren and the whole celebration. (And what is a “turducken”, you may ask? It’s a boned chicken stuffed inside a boned duck stuffed inside a turkey. No, really!) Christmas day we visited Shipley in the hospital, where he is recovering from what we hope will be his final surgery; he is doing well and will be home by the time this is emailed.

Our Travels and Bridge

As always we travelled the country in our RV to play Bridge. In January we visited Albuquerque for the regional and saw old friends. This year we went to all the National Championships, starting with Houston in March, after which we went and relaxed at Matagordo on the Gulf of Mexico. Then we visited friends Bill and Adrienne in Tucson, on the way to a regional in San Diego. Once back home we played the local regional in Denver and surprised ourselves by winning the District Grand National teams and thus a free trip to Washington DC in July. As part of that trip we went to Aunt Stasi’s 90th birthday celebration in Wolfboro, and visited David in Dubuque, Aunt Trudi in Rochester, Karen in Exeter, Shipley and family in West Hartford for the last time (they have moved to Utah), and Steve’s sort-of sister, Grace Markofsky, in the Catskills (her house is quite near the old Munson family summer home in Cragsmoor, which we visited and were welcomed in to tour by the present, delightful resident—even Steve liked him!). In November we left Fort Collins for Utah and California just before the severe cold weather, but not before not before enjoying a foot of snow. Three weeks in California missing the freeze back home were just fine, and we may do this every year. Some small successes at the Fall Nationals in San Diego included Steve leading at the halfway point in the BAM when not playing with Kitty! He finished 10th. As a pair we reached the finals of the Blue Ribbons and finished 9th in the NA Swiss.