Mary Nelle Gage
While I know that Billie is in Heaven with all the beloved family and friends who preceded her, I shall miss her like a front tooth. She was a wonderful friend to my mother and father who were her next-door neighbors and she did so much for them in their declining years that we Gages are forever in her debt. After my folks passed away, I loved being with Billie, enjoying her good cooking, relaxing on her summer patio filled with bloomong plants and begonias in the shade of her big tree, and talking in her beautiful home. She tauught me many things about how to be a friend and a neighbor. We shared happy memories of her "estate sale" in preparation for her move to Summerfield and then helping her get her apartment all fixed up to be the beautiful home she had always had. Every November, Ruth and I would help Billie get her patio plants inside and then in April or May, get everything set up outside again. In preparation for Memorial Day, she and my mom would take small American flags around the neighborhood to plant in each yard. Just a week before she died, I had a "bouquest" of small flags and asked her (at that point hardly able to talk without her teeth and with a very sore throat from the coughing) was she ready to go out with me to plant the flags and she gave a big nod "YES!" Iloved to ask her about her experiences down in Dealy Plaza on that fateful November 22, 1963. I celebrate what a wondergful woman I have been privileged to know.