LETTERS: KATHRYN'S SPUNK WILL BE MISSED BY MANY FRIENDS

To the editor:

During my first visit with Kathryn Gunderson, she told me of the tea room she had started in an empty store in Mounds, Ill., in her high school years. "There was little to do," she said, so she brought in a certain elegance 60 years ago.

Living in Chicago later she worked for the Cook County division of penal services and visited felons and wrote biographies of them.

When we discussed the failings of David's son Absalom, we sat stunned to hear Kathryn make a defense of the scoundrel. But she helped us understand the lament of David when he writes, "Absalom, would God I had died for thee."

She did not want anyone else to sit in her chair and wished the bus from the home to come on schedule. She was not a little mouse from a rest home. We knew she missed her husband, but she did not complain. Now that she is gone, her customers from the Mound City Tea Room, the fellows from the Cook County institutions and her classmates and teacher from Sunday school will miss her. Thanks, Kathryn, for your spunk.

PETER HILTY

Cape Girardeau