Marilyn Reads Michener

I found out the hard way that Marilyn liked reading in depth historical fiction with her favorite author being James Michener. Since I like to read so much I didn’t think anything more about her reading other than noticing and being glad that she also liked to read.

There were two instances that brought the differences in what we liked to read clearly to my attention. In the first one, I was a very supportive and participative guinea pig...

We were in Houston and because of the heat and humidity drinking a lot of ice tea. She had just finished reading Centennial, the story of Colorado from the raising of the Rockies to at least its centennial, or the U.S.’ Centennial, or… (I never read it so really don’t know the full story.) Anyway, the book had quite a list of teas that the Chinese workers building the Transcontinental Railroad used and she decided we should try every one of them. Some of them were hard to get but we managed. The one both of us agreed was not to our taste was Lapsang Souchong. It had a smokier coffee-like flavor that wasn’t as good as coffee, not that either of us drank coffee. (Although she did have a Melitta coffee strainer and we have had at least two other coffee makers. I believe it was and still is used mostly for parental visits.)

The second incident occurred much later when our whole family was snowbound in a rental house in Arnold. A local trip to a movie rental store was fine but our intended drive up to Bear Valley was cancelled. This time the book was Texas and the only movie she deemed suitable for children in the whole store that she also wanted to see happened to be the movie made from the book. I still don’t know how closely the movie “Texas” followed the book because none of us watched it through. Now though, none of her children would be able to be enticed to read Michener.

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Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.