Yesterday I found out one of my first friends in SW fandom died more than a year ago from cancer.  Someone had tried to contact her and discovered her mail was bouncing.  So after a Google search, that person found her obituary http://www.nyjnews.com/obituary/obit.php3?id=1715652.

I was not shocked or surprised.  She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997 and the last time I heard from her, her cancer had not only come back, it had mestasticized, growing in her bones and causing her a great deal of pain.  The thing that is amazing is that she made it another two years.  But she always was a tenacious spirit.

The obituary from the newspaper was so blah.  It said practically nothing about her life or what kind of person she was.  So I'm going to tell you. I first heard from Amanda in 1993, responding like a lot of people did to a letter printed in Dark Horse's Classic Star Wars #8.  Back in those days, DH not only had lettercols, they also used to post your full address.  In the days before widespread internet use--much less e-mail, IMs, message boards, and blogs--that was the main way to meet other fans.  This began several years' worth of correspondence and a few phone calls.  Her letters were always long, filled with clippings and artwork, photos galore of her collection and her family, and the occasional small gift.  I've kept most if not all of her letters.

She had been in fandom since 1974, tagging along with her sister to the massive Star Trek cons they used to have in New York in the '70s.  She'd met every major cast member of the original series, by the way, and had a small Enterprise tattoo on her shoulder long before it became trendy to get them. But she was also a hardcore SW geek, partial to the Skywalker clan, especially Luke.  She was a collector; she'd tell me stories about competing with another area collector for store displays.  Her tactic was to bring fresh-baked cookies to the bookstore staff so that they'd call her when they were ready to take down the book dumps and displays.  Later when she had a job for a few years at the same store, her customers knew her as the Star Wars Lady, always eager to chat up the saga and wearing her X-Wing pendant.  She costumed, mostly in ROTJ Luke's Jedi robes, and she even got her two daughters in on the act with Jedi robes and lightsabers of their own.  She really had those kids trained.  They knew Bill Murray's Lounge Singer "Nothing But Star Wars" song.  They helped scout out toys and merchandise.  They helped set up displays at home.  Their mom even had a picture of Tales Of The Jedi heroine Nomi Sunrider up in their room to keep watch over them while they slept.  One time she sent me a tape of the girls "singing" the Imperial March.  Her older daughter started thinking the younger Obi-Wan was kind of cute after TPM came out. I told Amanda I thought young Obi-Wan was cute too and she told me (a long time Han drooler) that once you go Jedi, you don't go back.  Looking around at my collection of Anakin stuff and the hundreds of Hayden/Anakin photos on my harddrive, I suppose that's true. When the Special Editions came out, the local press did stories on her and her kids.  She got so many requests when TPM was released, she started turning them down. I think though one of the highlights of her fannish life was getting to meet Mark Hamill twice in 1996. She remembered him as warm, funny, and a total sweetheart.

She contributed stories, poems, filks, and artwork to a number of fanzines in the 1990s, including my zines Snowfire and Blue Harvest.  She ran her own Luke zine with her friend Kymm August, Echo Three.  Some of her filks were based on other songs (I still can't listen to U2's "Mysterious Ways" without thinking of her version, heh heh) but she occasionally wrote her own original songs.  She could sing and play piano and even taught it for a while.  We more or less liked the same type of music (she had fun stories about hanging around not only old school fannish types but punks as well) and I introduced her to a lot of cool stuff.

Whenever I kvetched about fandom, she'd tell me fandom is just a microcosm of society as a whole.  When I had a major setback once, she sent me these inspirational bookmarks.  When I sent her a graduation announcement, she used it and Dave Dorman's cover art from Dark Empire II #1 to make a card.  She knew I was a big Leia fan, so when she scored the book dump for the Courtship of Princess Leia, she sent it to me.  I still have it.  Once I mentioned there weren't any Leia t-shirts around (this was about 1995), she made one for me. 

She did not have an easy life.  The Trek scene was an escape from domestic dischord as a youngster and she suffered a lot of personal and financial problems over the years.  One Christmas, I sent some stuff for her girls and when she thanked me for the gifts, she told me if I hadn't sent them, her kids would have had nothing to open Christmas morning.  Her husband was less than understanding about her fannish activities.  I don't want to dish on too many details, but she had a very stressful home life and I can't help but think that had a negative effect on her health.

By about 2000, I was hearing from Amanda less and less.  Sometimes I'd get an e-mail out of nowhere or a Christmas card, but whenever I sent I response, I wouldn't hear anything back.  There were times I worried the cancer might have returned or that maybe her husband set down some sort of ultimatum.  In June 2003 I got a letter with the bad news that indeed she was very ill.  Before relapsing with cancer in 2002 (ironically, months after she passed the five-year "cured" mark), she was working multiple jobs to support her family which left her little time to pursue the things that brought her joy.  She said in her letter the chemo made her very weak and unable to tolerate anything with flashing lights or quick motion, so she couldn't watch any of the SW films anymore.  She could go online only when she felt up to it, which wasn't often.  The letter was almost a goodbye but not quite.  She was determined to live even with the odds stacked against her at that point.  I sent a letter back saying how much I'd valued her correspondence over the years and if there was anyone who could beat this awful disease, it was her.  She sent a couple of brief e-mails after that, but from 2004 on, nothing more.  I worried for a long time the worst might have happened, yet I couldn't bring myself to do a Google search for an obituary either.  Eventually, I figured there would be a way I'd find out when the time was right.

I'd only met Amanda in person once, in 1994 at a small media fandom con in New Jersey called Eclecticon (which she called "Eclecticsnooze").  She was every bit as funny and warm in person as she was in her letters and phone calls.  It's too bad we never got the opportunity to hang out again.  I wish she'd been able to come down to the Magic of Myth exhibit in Washington, D.C. when I was volunteering there or that we'd been able to meet up during my trips to NYC.  I wish she'd been able to attend a Celebration.  Once she told me that if you have the opportunity to do something, you should do it because you never know if you'll ever have that chance again.  I try to remember that.

I only hope that somehow she was able to experience the final chapter of the saga she loved so much in life since she passed away a month before ROTS opened.  I'd like to think she also learned the secrets of immortality from Qui-Gon.

Clear skies, my Master.