The Friday Study Club asked me to present a program a week ago Friday at their monthly country club meeting. As they were celebrating an early St. Patrick’s Day, they requested that I come up with something Irish.

Friendship is a funny word. Put 20 people in a room and ask them to define it, and you'll get 20 answers. And they'll all be right, or right enough. Because most folks won't define the word "dictionary" style, but rather by how they feel about their closest besties.

I was born in 1932 at Stockton, Kansas and my first grade was in a one-room schoolhouse during the 1936 dust bowl. We had to have lanterns on in the middle of the day, it was so dark from dust storms. The tumble weeds blew up against the fences and the dirt covered them half as high as the fence post. My father had three heat strokes that year trying to get enough hay for our dairy herd.

LeRoy E. Smith (Lee) retired to the Great Heavenly Lake on March 21, 2023, at 8:20 p.m. at Mercy McCune-Brooks Hospital, Carthage, MO. With his yellow fishing rod in hand, the Lord welcomed him at the gates of Heaven.

Sue Butts, 82, of Pittsburg, passed away at 7:07 p.m., Wednesday, March 15, 2023 at the Solace House of the Ozarks in Joplin, Missouri.

Marilyn Sue Brown, 82, of Pittsburg, KS passed away Saturday, March 25, 2023 at Via Christi Village, where she had resided since November 2022.

Helen C. Braden, age 91, a former resident of Chillicothe, Missouri, passed away at Oakview Estates, Frontenac, Kansas.

Mary Ann Boyd, 91, of Arma, Kansas died at 5 p.m. Saturday, March 25, 2023 at Via Christi Village in Pittsburg, Kansas.