Jeannine Saunders

is honored with a Brick from Catherine Fulks.

There are many words to describe Jeannine Saunders: hard working, talented, stubborn, spirited, creative, loyal, caring, mother, playwright, wife, teacher, and most important to me, friend. But of all her fine and outstanding qualities, the one that always strikes people hardest is her oblivion to exactly how much she impacts people, and how important and talented a person she really is. Many people's egos are thinly veiled by false modesty, but Jeannine's lack of pompousness is purely genuine.

She would kill me in a heartbeat if I told her life's story here, so I'll leave that for A&E to do one of these days. Jeannine and those close to her know the obstacles she has overcome. Besides, her triumphs exceed those that can be listed like demographics: four children, a Master's degree (and another one coming), contest-winning plays (one of which can be found in WSU's library). The triumphs I privately acknowledge in her will never be listed in any book, never be extolled in a playbill, never be known to many, but that is the nature of life: the most important things often go uncelebrated and overlooked.

However, it is exactly the uncelebrated and overlooked in Jeannine that I see and celebrate. I'm talking about her keen eye for detail, her ability to delve into a person's soul to find the truth in the facade being presented to the world, her extraordinarily odd sense of humor, and her ability to integrate every aspect of a woman's underlying spirit into the characters she creates in her writing. I celebrate her independence and her dependence on others, her highs and her lows, her virtues and her faults.

It isn't a coincidence that her birthstone is the emerald. She is an emerald in human form: beautiful, precious, valuable, and flawed. It is her willingness to acknowledge her flaws and work through, around, and because of them that makes her such a jewel. It is that which leads to her sometimes shocking lack of self-inflation.

I could write for a long time about how wonderful and special a person Jeannine is. What is most important to me is the something inside of her that makes her one of the only truly good people I know. She is, without a doubt, the closest and truest friend I have ever been graced by, and I feel lucky to know her and honored to be counted among her friends. My wish for her is that her struggles be limited, her pain brief and infrequent, and that her personal successes outnumber her professional ones (although I hope she has quite a few of those as well!). I wish for her to see herself like I see her, and I hope to know her for many decades to come.

Submitted by Catherine Fulks

September 16, 1998