Mom

My mother, Margaret Lay Cross, passed away peacefully on the morning of July 6.  Our trip will again pause while I go to Birmingham to tend to arrangements.

Mom was born and raised in Birmingham, and that’s the only place she ever really wanted to live.  She was Southern to her core.

However, she was a woman of action.  She didn’t just get a degree from the University of Alabama (where she met my dad), she put it to use.  When I was in grade school in Birmingham, she was a dietitian at a large hospital.  That made her the only full-time working woman in any of my friends’ families.

When we moved to California, she immersed herself in the local Newcomers Club, becoming its president, and worked for the local chapter of the American Heart Association.

In a family full of political junkies, she had meaningful accomplishments.  After she and Dad moved back to Alabama, she was elected as a delegate to the 1976 Republican National Convention.  Two years later, she was on the Alabama statewide ballot as the Republican nominee for Secretary of the State.  This was her campaign photo.

She was ahead of her time, in that Republicans didn’t start winning (then sweeping) Alabama statewide offices until the ’80s.  She stayed active in state Republican politics for a number of years after her run for office.

She was vivacious, feisty and opinionated.  She was a role model for me to fearlessly aspire to whatever I wanted to try to achieve.

She was a devoted grandmother to Pete, Abby and JJ, even though we all lived far away.  She made sure that every visit was a special occasion.

Mom and my dad divorced in 1981.  She met DeWitte Cross in 1996.  They married two years later and lived together happily in their golden years.  She bravely faced DeWitte’s passing earlier this year, but as illness overtook her, it became clear how much she missed him.

The celebration of her life will be intimate and family-centric (poignantly, she outlived all of her close friends).

She will be long remembered.