Alice Grace Bournonville MacCauley Coates was born June 23, 1908, in Waverly, New York, and raised mostly in New Jersey, with ancestors all over New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland, going back to the Revolution. (Her grandfather, the Rev. Hugh Bournonville MacCauley, changed the spelling of the family name.) Her father, Harvey MacCauley, worked for the railroads in various management positions and her mother, Grace Agatha Powers MacCauley, was an opera singer until they married. When my mother was about 8 years old, her parents divorced and her mother married her ex-husband's best friend. From all accounts, Mama's stepfather was a wonderful man and she was very fond of him. He was an executive with Johnson & Johnson, and quite well-off. After she graduated from high school in Bloomfield New Jersey, she went to New York to study art, and became a fashion artist. She worked for McCall's patterns for a while, and also in the home decor department at Macy's.

My father owned a pharmacy in downtown Dallas in the 20's, then sold it and went to work for Squibb, travelling around Texas and Oklahoma, then went with Johnson & Johnson. He was apparently a very talented pharmaceutical research chemist as well as a super-salesman, and they transferred him to their New Jersey headquarters in the early 1930's. He met the boss's daughter and bragged to my aunt that he was going to marry her, which he did on July 31, 1934. Papa died in Dallas in 1954 of cancer and she never looked at another man. Among her last words were instructions that her wedding rings would go to the crematorium on her finger, and also that she would tell him about us when she got there. They had 3 children, Tom, Sue, & Alice, and eventually she had 3 grand-daughters and 7 great-grandchildren, whom she enjoyed bragging about.

In August 1944, the family moved to Corpus Christi, and 6 months later to Dallas. We don't know the circumstances of those moves, but Papa owned a small credit reporting business in Oak Cliff. For the first few years we were in Dallas, she did not work outside the home, although she did some telemarketing, and conducted art classes for the neighborhood children. After we had been in Dallas several years, Mama went to work as a salesclerk at a ladies' wear shop called Volk's, then answered an ad from Taylor Publishing seeking proofreading trainees. Mama, with her language skills, jumped at the chance, and became a professional proofreader. She retired from proofreading in the mid-1960s, sold the house, and enrolled in Texas Women's University at Denton, first in Library Science, then switched to English. She graduated with a BA degree in June 1968, just about on her 60th birthday. She travelled a little, going back East to her roots, then returned to Dallas and worked in Cokesbury's bookstore for several years.

When she was 69 years old, an intruder assaulted her on a Saturday afternoon in October, and left her for dead in her East Dallas apartment. The neighbor found her the next day and called the emergency squad. I was called and arrived early Monday morning, to find her still on a gurney in the Parkland Hospital emergency room. We got her admitted and she was in a coma for several days. She made a fair recovery from those injuries but was disabled and could no longer work or drive. She moved to California a few years later to be near me and Allie. She was nearly 80 when she was struck by a car, and once again made a death-defying recovery but never walked again. She lived in assisted living homes for several years, then moved to the nursing home where she died. The nursing home staff loved her and doted on her, showing us a side of her we had not seen before.

She was a charter member of the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Oak Cliff, an experience she and I shared and often talked about. She particularly took pride in her years as Music Director, carefully selecting recorded music to play during the Sunday services. Her notes on her record albums reflect her meticulous attention to detail in deciding which selection was appropriate for which part of the service. She kept in touch until her death with friends in the Fellowship and always enjoyed the newsletters. Even after her eyesight failed, she wanted me to read the newsletter to her, and we would reflect on the familiar names mentioned there.

She never lost her extraordinary skill at memorizing and reciting poetry, and kept up with the news until the last few months, voting in every national election including 2000. Until her eyesight failed, she was still proofreading everything she read and her marginal notes are part of her legacy. She kept extensive journals all her life, and kept up a lively correspondence. During the last few years, she dictated her letters for me to type and was meticulous about dictating the grammar, spelling and punctuation just the way she wanted it.

My mother was a remarkable woman, a true survivor, who endured much unhappiness in her long life but found a great deal of happiness in her family and friends.