Friday, January 6, 2023
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Dear Bob,
I am writing this from my home in a small village by the ocean on the Swedish West Coast and I have not seen Cora IRL for many years but we have been in touch now and then. After the snail mail period mostly online but also by phone. Cora was one of my dear close friends at FSC where I spent a very happy year 1976/77 as a foreign student and Cora was a freshman. She was part of our very close group of girls, always with her great attitude and happy smile and always kind to everyone. She invited me home to her parents’ beautiful house with lots of antiques and many interesting things. The huge antique doll house upstairs! Most of all: Cora’s smiling face and the Alton generosity. Cora’s Mom’s hospitality and genuine warmth. Interesting conversations with all three of them and still lots of memories now, 45 years later. I met with Cora again when I returned in 1986 and we had a nice dinner together with some of the other FSC girls.
In the fall of 2016 Cora & I got a lot closer again after years of more sporadic contact. I was returning to Massachusetts and I had planned to get all the girls back together for our 40 year reunion. When I told Cora what I was trying to organize, she immediately - still as generous and friendly as always - suggested we should all meet first at your house, before the planned walk along ‘memory lane’ on FSC campus (now FSU). I thought that was a great idea and I was looking forward immensely to seeing both of you that October. Talking to Cora over the phone it was like no time had passed since our youth, we just kept talking like we used to do back in the dorm or the cafeteria. She told me about you Bob, in the way girls talk, telling me about her great happiness that you had found each other, her love for you. And I was happy for both of you. Unfortunately I was hit by ominous health issues right before my trip over there and we had to postpone the reunion. This turned into a lengthy process, including my doctor’s “no flying whatsoever” verdict. Covid certainly did not improve reunions but finally these past few months I have regained some hope that I will be physically able to take up travelling again in the coming few years. New happy thoughts about a possible reunion came along, but no actual plans yet.
If and when another FSC reunion will be possible, be absolutely sure that Cora will be greatly missed and not forgotten among the rest of us still around. She will be there with us in spirit. And for myself, I will carry her memory and smile within my heart forever and in my mind as long as aging allows.
You have made a beautiful memorial video for Cora. Here I have added some of my own old and faded printed photos. But my memories have not faded. These days we would have taken selfies together. Back then I took that photo of her, she is sitting in her dorm. She probably had similar ones of me in her own camera. The one of me is from a hike to Tuckerman Ravine, not with Cora but at least you can see what I looked like that year. The rest of the photos are from a happy weekend with Cora and her parents at their beautiful house and from one of our excursions.
I have a candle here beside me for Cora while writing this and I will light another one during the service. I will try the offered possibility to attend online.
Rest in peace, Cora B!
From your long term friend forever Carin Koch (Carlsson back then)
