IN MEMORIAM: Andre Moul Ross 1920-2006

Andre was one of my best friend's mother. She celebrated 85 years of life, most of them as a veterinarian, and later as a playwright. She was one of the first pioneers to encourage the neutering of pets and was known to chastise those who let their animals breed at a time when few thought about unwanted cats and dogs. She also wrote many plays, some of which were performed in an old show boat called the Driftwood Floating Theater in Eddyville, New York, a town which was the last stop on the D and H canal before you headed out to the Hudson River. I always said there were more bars than residents, and it is the town where one of my husbands made his residense in the Mad Anthony Saloon. The old showboat was sadly burned down by two teens some years ago, but I got to see one her plays in the old boat, lined with velvet curtains and seats, and vaudvillian entertainment.

She raised four children in the Hudson Valley of New York, and I was lucky to have befriended Julie, one of her two daughters. (see previous blog entries this week)

Tonight we spent the evening making bookmarks to celebrate her life this coming Sunday. Tonite's picture is one of her as a child. The back has the first poem she wrote:

The Flower

The stem grows up
the roots grow down
and where they meet
is on the ground.

Here is to Andre, an animal activist, a mother, a playwright, a grandmother, and a kind, gentle, yet vivacious spirit who is much missed and well remembered here in the Hudson Valley.

Love, Patti