Dearest Classmate and Friend,
After all these years I have just received contact from a dear friend and classmate who is my daughter's name sake. I haven't seen any of you since, very latest 1958, I am eagerly looking forward to reuniting with you in the near future, possibly at our 2007 Reunion.  If for any reason I am not there I want you to know that I have thought of you often and longed to reach you and find out how you are doing.  I am telling you now, knowing you has been an honor in my life and you will forever have a place in my heart. 
           I am united with my friend in heart, what matter if our place be wide apart?
                                    Anwar-I-Suheili  (Persian poet)
                                                                                              
                         "I didn't find my friends; the good God gave them to me."     
                                              Ralph Waldo Emerson
  

                                          It is my joy in life to find 
                                         At every turning of the road
                                         The strong arm of a comrade kind
                                         To help me onward with my load.

                                         And since I have no gold to give,
                                         And love alone must make amends,
                                         My only prayer is, while I live---
                                         God make me worthy of my friends.
                                                Frank Dempster Sherman

             "Stay" is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.   Amos Bronson Alcott

   Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weight thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.                                  George Eliot 

                                                   FRIEND
I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.
I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me.
I love you for the part of me that you bring out.
I love you for putting your hand into my heaped-up heart and passing over all the foolish and frivolous and weak things that you can't help dimly seeing there, and for drawing out into the light all the beautiful radiant belongings that no one else had looked quite far enough to find.
I love you for ignoring the possibilities of the fool and weakling in me, and for laying firm hold on the possibilities of the good in me.
I love you for closing your ears to the discords in me, and for adding to the music in me by worshipful listening.
I love you because you are helping me to make of the timber of my life not a tavern, but a temple, and of the words of my every day not a reproach, but a song.
I love you because you have done more than any creed could have done to make me happy.
You have done it without a touch, without a word, without a sign.
You have done it first by being yourself.
After all, perhaps this is what being a friend means.

Warmest regards, until we meet again my friend,
Ann Harbison