My View

So many people disdain the cheery, chatty holiday letters that some folks send that it seems incumbent upon those who enjoy them to defend them.

How else would I know that Katherine Beauregard is engaged to marry Ben O’Neal this fall? Why do I care? Well, Katherine’s mother, Virginia Beauregard, worked for me when she was carrying her daughter and had to spend the last trimester in bed, which really messed up the production schedule. In my New York years while married to the late Arnie Rosen, the Beauregards often flew in from Detroit for her late father Kirk’ Beauregard’s Dec. 30 birthday, and the four of us spent many a New Year’s Eve together drinking champagne and eating lobster. You bet I care!

How else would I know that Margie Barter is now Margie Jordan, having wed her longtime beau in June? The Barters lived next door to my weekend home in New Jersey in the early ’80s.

How else would I know that Scott and Charlie McGehee’s dog, Bubba, survived a life-threatening bout of intussusception, expanding their vocabulary if depleting their checking account? Or that they hosted a reunion for old friends from Scott’s days as editor of the Living section of the Detroit Free Press?

Missing from Scott’s reunion was another friend from “The Freep,” one-time editor Kurt Luedtke who decided he had done everything he could do in journalism by the time he was 40 or so. He went on to become an Academy Award-winning screenwriter. Kurt’s wife, Eleanor, reports that the state of air travel has turned them into long-distance drivers. One trip was to Chicago to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary; another will be back to Longboat Key for their 16th year renting the same condo.

Charles Surber keeps alive a cherished connection; his late brother, Steven, was my invaluable admin in New York.

High school buddy Janet Birnkrant Levine’s annual report is a photo montage, which this year included husband Ellsworth’s 80th birthday party.

The oldest of Nancy and George Walter’s three adopted treasures is Grady, age 7; how exciting that his science fair project won “most creative.” And from my step-daughter, Stacie Schechter, comes the news that her daughter, Wenwen, 8, has lost her two front teeth.

I get it that my trip down memory lane does not hold the same interest for you. And I get it that Facebook and its ilk may soon render all letter writing extinct, a sad prophecy if ever there were one. In the meantime, I cherish these chatty missives. They are a celebration of the life with which I have been blessed, thanks to the wonderful people in it then and now. My message to friends past, present and future is simply … keep those letters and cards coming.

Molly Schecter is a 12-year resident of Longboat Key.