Mary Kay Kare, RIP

[smofbabe]

Very sorry to hear of the death of Mary Kay Kare. She and I both primarily volunteered in programming at Worldcon and she often helped me when I was running Program Ops by taking long shifts at the program participant registration table. We also bonded over our love of the color purple and of football, spending hours together at various Smofcons watching college football and the NFL. (It's appropriate that in this photo of both of us at the San Jose Smofcon in 2010, by Chaz Boston-Baden, I'm wearing a sports-related shirt.) In the last couple of years I kept in touch with her sporadically through Twitter, especially when her team, the Oklahoma Sooners, won a game. She was also a big mystery fan: I was startled when I read a book in a mystery series I follow to encounter a law clerk with her name, the result of a Tuckerization. There were also many shared meals at various conventions, where she was usually a fun and interesting companion. However, as other people have mentioned, Mary Kay was a lot like the Longfellow poem about the little girl with the curl on her forehead...

Mary Kay was prone to depression and she never really got over the tragically early and sudden death of her husband Jordin, after which she became somewhat of a recluse. It's a cliché to say when someone dies that they are finally at peace and rest, but that is what came to mind when I heard this news. RIP.