Photo by Phyllis Stokes
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, endorses the keeper’s assessment that all in-laws should be treated with respect, but when you have only one sister-in-law there are special demands, so Shirley’s birthday party at Elizabeth and Huck’s was of the highest priority.
Brother Orv saw fit to include the keeper in their wedding party when he and Shirley married in Rice Lake, and they overlooked the keeper’s thoughtless remark to the preacher that it was “ungodly hot” in the church.
Shirley’s focus in life has been the welfare of the humans and animals around her, with the animals justifiably coming first at times.
As the wife of a professional military man, she accommodated the demands of Orv’s service in peace and war, and she did it with class.
It has always impressed the keeper as an “enlisted man” that Orv, as a Lt. Colonel, did not require the keeper to salute him and call him “sir” at family gatherings. But on the occasion of her birthday, the keeper salutes Shirley and if it were not an insult to her gender he would say, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SIR!”
Photo by Bill Stokes