Annette was my Councilor in FPE. She cam all the way to Denver to interview me. I had been apprehensive as her plane neared that day; yet I was at ease with her from the first moment I met her. She helped and encouraged me as I took my first steps in FPE. Sometimes when something special came up she would phone me long distance late at night and we would chat for a few minutes like two excited

women.

As I was maturing in FPE I looked to her as my goal. Of all the FPs that I've known, her life was the best balance between the two roles of man and woman. As a man he lived with confidence, moving in a masculine world with enthusiasm and satisfaction. He was notably successful in his business and his associates stretched up and down the west coast, over the Rockies and on into the midwest. One of his business friends that knew nothing of Annette described Sheldon as the All American Boy. At home in the valley town of his beloved Idaho his influence permeated the populace. Everybody I talked to seemed to know and respect him.

He had the rare gift of not taking himself and Annette too seriously. He could laugh at the femme side of his life and joke about Annette a woman with human foibles and failings just like any other woman. As a woman, Annette was quiet and charming. I want to say she was pretty but what I really mean is attractive. Everything about her was correct for a woman her age and lifestyle. No pretense, nothing arti- ficial that had to be labored over. She was at ease as a woman, a warm and friendly person, free of the tendency to overdo the feminine as- pects that characterizes some FPs. And much to my surprise both men and women were comfortable around her.

Her public acceptance in the role of Annette was unbelievable. When I was with her dressed she would introduce me to a policeman friend as casually as to another FP. No one seemed shocked. No one gasped. In the unique frame of reference that she had created, this was all quite normal to her friends. Because Annette accepted herself, it was easy for the world to accept her. At times I would look at this woman and marvel. She seemed so happy, so healthy, so well adjusted. And there was something else about her that I could never define perhaps a heightened sensitivity to life's promises, perhaps a quiet awareness of the brevity of life.

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