Remembering and Finding Out - Skip Meury

I never cease to be amazed at the community of Claremont. We have been attending CUCC for over 26 years now, and have come to know many of the golden members over these years. Golden signifying perhaps their ages, but really, golden signifying their quality of spirit. Recently I wrote about the lives of Joe Platt and Gray Bell and their amazing lives within the HMC and CUCC communities as well as in the world.

This afternoon we said our final good-byes to Skip Meury in the Kingman Chapel at CUCC. I've known Skip since we've been in Claremont, mostly as someone very involved in the life of the church in many ways, as well as the grandmother to my daughters' good friends. You can read about Skip from one of her granddaughter's blogs here.

As memorials are times to come together to share stories, I always learn special things about the people who have gone on before us, and I wonder why I didn't know these things before. I never seem to think to ask people about their lives, except for what is going on in the present. I should, perhaps, remedy this.

Anyway, the things I learned about Skip today were quite colorful. When Myrlie Evers moved to Claremont after her husband, Medgar Evers, was gunned down by a sniper in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi, Skip immediately befriended her, helping her and her children settle into life in Claremont. 

On a completely different fact, when Skip was working in New York as a fashion illustrator, she was approached by Norman Rockwell and asked to be a model for a painting. Although that painting never did make it to the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, it does hang in a private gallery in Princeton, NJ. 

I know that this just barely touches on the stories about Skip, and many people spoke of her caring, dedicated friendship at the service today and her tireless work in social rights all her life.