The woman who cared for my sister and me, taught me how to defend myself, provided love and other forms of sustenance, Ola Mae Gravett, died this afternoon. She was 95 years old. She knew my paternal Grandfather, my uncles and my Father as she had worked with all of them when she was a PN at Bellevue Hospital in NYC. My Father noticed, early on, that she had a special way with the newborns and offered her a job taking care of my older sister who was 1 1/2 at the time. She stayed with us until I was 12 when she found a very good man whom she married and with whom she spent the golden years of her life. She leaves behind an excellent young man whom she adopted a few years before she came to work with us. Her son works with child protective services, and has a wife and his own son who is now 12. There aren't sufficient words to describe the debt I owe this woman.
