Leona (Lee as she preferred to be called) Douglans Yarbrough and I grew up a block apart on 143rd Avenue and shared birthdays one day apart. We learned to swim together, took tennis lessons together and went through Lutheran confirmation together and she was my best childhood friend. She taught me how to drive a stick shift on the back roads behind Skyline Drive and we had lots of harmless adventures together. Lee was raised by her widowed mother Louise, Swedish grandmother Granny and Uncle Gilbert who all lived together. When she turned 18, she asked me to be her maid of honor in her first marriage from which she was widowed two years later. Her subsequent marriage to Tony, a cousin of Glen Yarbrough, was a long and good one and they always seemed like soul mates. We lived in different states but kept in touch through the years around our birthdays and enjoyed talking about our early life exploits our parents never knew about. Lee was always the friend you could count on for anything. She was very successful as a parts and finance manager for a number of trucking companies through the years. In her 50s, Lee was diagnosed with Myasthenia gravis. She fought it valiantly for more than 10 years, but eventually it wore her down and she died while they lived in Texas on February 7, 2007.

Barb Calhoun Bonnem