Dear Ms. Walford,

I read the tribtues to my dear friend Sharon Gilbert. We were last together in the 1970s. I lived in Brooklyn with my parents and she came from California to go on some interviews. We were students Brooklyn College in previous years.

Sharon loved California and said she felt healthy and free there. She was enthusiastic about having a car. She loved the hard work and challenge of her freelance assignments. She had temporarily suspended her PhD research to work in the film and publishing industry.

I knew her parents briefly and her wonderful Uncle Mark. I will look forward to seeing her novels published. It is no surprise that so many friends loved her and admired her talent. The last time I saw her so many years ago she had traveled from California by train. She told me that the long tedious trip was worth it because of the beautiful American scenery.

A couple of days after she left, a man she had met on the train and spoke well of called and asked for her. She had given him our phone number and he sounded anxious to be in touch. But, Sharon and I were not in contact after that I did not know where she had gone.

Sharon was a great survivor of obstacles. Thirty years later I still see her as my Brooklyn College classmate in Professor Fitzhugh´s Shakespeare seminar. Sharon was outstanding and won a scholarship for summer study in England.

I also remember that during vacations, she was a hard-laboring typist at the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell in New York City. Whatever she did was outstanding. We used to worry about meeting a nice husband.

Sharon made very moment count. I will feel great joy and hope to see her stories and scholarship published.

Please post this for me if you can.

Sincerely,

Harriet W. Andrade