You burst forth from your mother’s womb full tilt at Kaiser-Permanente Hospital in Oakland,California on May 25, 1948.

Anne Winslow Blodgett Taub on life’s fast track—our only daughter, mother of our two oldest and most talented grandchildren and wife of our favorite rocket scientist son-in-law, Russell Peter Taub.

As these words are being penned, you are approaching the magic age of sixty—a miraculous achievement for an insulin-dependent diabetic of nearly forty-four years. You are slim and trim, a disciplined exerciser who eats properly and strives to keep blood sugar at the proper level.

The first two photos speak for themselves. In the third frame you are a high school senior and national merit scholar off to Oberlin College in Ohio.

The fourth frame is the bride I escorted ecstatically down the aisle of the children’s chapel at the Winnetka Congregational Church on January 22, 1972 to the lilting strains of Handel’s “Water Music.”
Frame five is your thriving family. Frame six: doting grandmother reading to grandsons Gavin Thomas Taub and Gavin Riley Taub of Mill Valley, California.

This is a brief prologue to the story of your three score years of indomitable life that continues to bring great joy and blessings into the lives of your proud parents.

Your mother and I certify that you are a miracle child, wife, mother and grandmother and that you have earned our eternal, unconditional love and admiration. I promise thousands more words to more fully flesh out your life, but I must put these few words into type as an overdue tribute.

I close with your mother’s favorite acronym—ARILY—always remember I love you.

Dad