Kelley Paul - True and Constant Friends: Love and Inspiration from Our Grandmothers, Mothers, and Friends

Vincent Remini

Kelley has always been a writer. Whether writing marketing literature for the telecommunications industry or for her own creative expression, it has been a constant in her life. During my medical training at Duke, she was our main breadwinner, writing for companies in Research Triangle Park. Even when the subject matter was less than scintillating, she had a gift for making it so.

Since I entered politics, Kelley is always the first reviewer I seek for my speeches and articles, and she always makes them better. As our sons and friends will attest, she is also a good storyteller, so when she told me that she wanted to write about her relationships with her grandmother, mother and close-knit group of college friends, I knew it would be great.

As you know real men dont cry, or at least they dont usually admit to it but, as I read Kelleys essays, I laughed, I cried, and I was moved. The running joke in our family is that she is such a great storyteller that we werent sure if she was writing fiction or non-fiction, but the truth is that she always makes real life much more interesting sometimes more interesting in the telling than perhaps it was in the living!

Kelley is convinced that her storytelling gene comes from the Irish grandmother she writes about in this book, but I think she got a healthy dose from her father Hilton toohe can tell a story youve heard a hundred times and still reel you in for the climax.

My family may count fewer dramatic storytellers in our ranks, but its not that we dont have a story to tell. In this book, Kelley writes of the powerful sources of inspiration our mothers and grandmothers are, and in the Paul family that is certainly true.

The women in my family have been long-lived, strong-willed and opinionated. From my grandmothers to my mother runs a strength and direction that has guided our family for generations. Even during times in history when women didnt often take leadership roles in society, the women in my family were the quiet, yet powerful directors of our destiny. In the winter of 1903, my maternal great-grandmother Millicent Duncan Creed wrote over one hundred letters to her fianc Herman. She described great snowfalls and twenty-two degrees below zero weather. She described exhilarating sleigh rides and buggy rides and how much more delightful they would have been with him by her side.

Herman worked in a sawmill about sixty miles away. In those days, before automobiles, it was a major undertaking to travel that far and so he returned only on holidays. The train took her letters to him. Her letters warned him not to have too much fun or pay too much attention to the German girls there. She wrote of Sabbath Day School, sermons, and lectures. Often, she wrote of missing church because of quarantine for smallpox or measles or muddy, impassable roads.

I was surprised that Millicent wrote about a new card game that was all the rage and helped alleviate their cabin fever during the harsh winter. When she had visited us down in Texas in her late eighties, we were told that she strongly disapproved of cards and had never played. We took particular delight in corrupting her with a game of Old Maid. Little did we know then that she had once upon a time, in her rebellious youth, enjoyed a good game of cards. But we didnt stop there. We also took my great-grandmother to her first movie,