We trained together for the Peace Corps Tonga V on Molokai, Hawaii, where we bonded because we were both almost de-selected--she because she had once chased a Tongan with a frog and I because I lived in a dream world. ("That's your greatest asset," Andrea said.)
We were assigned to different villages on the same island, Tongatapu, where I discovered that in addition to being a natural as a teacher and teacher-trainer, she was a mesmerizing re-teller of Twilight Zone episodes. She shared my love for Dorothy Parker's verses.
We celebrated Christmas Eve 1970 together in Fiji, where we had our first Indian food, and then on New Year's Eve we were together in New Zealand, where she woke me up to tell me someone we'd met earlier in the day had just passed a roasted chicken for us through the window of our room at the YMCA. "Oh, I was hoping he would," I said, and that was another story Andrea told well.
She forgave me for writing the address of a New Year's Eve party on a paper bag and then recycling it before we could use it to get there.
She hitch-hiked with me through New Zealand, marveling at the friendly people and beautiful sights and seeing 32 movies since we didn't have electricity or current movies in Tonga--although we did see the film version of Romeo and Juliet in Nuku'alofa, where the second reel was shown before the first, leading Romeo and Juliet to die before the star-crossed lovers had ever met.
Andrea was a Super Vol (Super Volunteer) and even extended for a year, visiting me in San Francisco, where she, my mother, and I had drinks at a place on the Embarcadero where the bartender gave us the "rests" of every drink he served to the other customers. (Not from their glasses, mind you, but from his shaker.)
Andrea taught at the United Nations among other places and made me really want to be an ESL student because she was so gifted as a teacher!
Andrea was the one who told me, when I returned from Algeria after two years, about a new talk show hostess who made you want to be a fat black woman--Oprah Winfrey, a name I'd never heard before.
Andrea shared my love for musicals and put on the album of Pippins almost the minute I walked in the door of the home she shared with Mark Goodman in 1976.
I missed both of her weddings--something I wouldn't do today--but I was there soon after the birth of her daughter Jenny (Jennifer Elaine Goodman), who turned out to be as extraordinary as her mother.
Andrea welcomed my son Jonathan and me at the Durango Airport in 1989 with champagne and tapa cloth spread out in our honor, Tongan style. When Jonathan told her he'd thrown up three times on the rocky flights over, she responded, "Only three times?" I have a video of that! Andrea knew how to capture and preserve memories.
She also had warm and wonderful friends like Cathy Contreras, Betty Foley, and Debi Orr.
In 2003 Andrea organized a trip for a small group of these friends in New York City, where we saw five musicals and toasted to Dorothy Parker at the Algonquin Club.
Andrea invited me to join her, her husband Roger, and daughter Jenny on a cruise of Turkey in 2005, and when she told me that Jenny couldn't go on the cruise because she'd received a grant to study folkdancing in China, I said, "Okay, let's go to China with Jenny."
We couldn't do that, but we did go on an incredible cruise of Turkey on the yacht of Donna and Suat Gulec.
In 2006 we had time together at Electra Lake.
I was last with Andrea in April 2010, shortly before she died of pancreatic cancer.
At the airport, after I went through security, she led her daughter Jenny and friends Cathy and Betty in singing, "So long, farewell, auf weidersehen, goodbye" from the Sound of Music. , but as you can tell, she will be with me forever.
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