Hope Joe can hear me ...

A lot of us are still reeling from the death last week of writer J. Franklin Dunkin. I knew of Joe when we attended the same school in Perry County Alabama. I could put his face with a name and saw him in the halls and around at school but we weren't really acquaintances. He was a "boy" in 2nd year of Junior High and I was a Senior.

It wasn't until years and more years later, after my Dad had died and I had beocme interested in genealogies, that I realized all those Dunkins I was going to school with were my cousins. I began to refer to them as my "distant Dunkin cousins."

Later, a lot of us got together on FACEBOOK and that's when I came to know more about Joe. The first thing I found out was that he was a dedicated writer. Most of us fooled around with writing but Joe was serious about it. He invited me to hubpages where I read one of his travelogues. I immediately knew that I liked his writing style.

He seemed to always want to encourage all of us in our writing efforts. At his suggestion, I joined hubpages but, as with most of my writing, I only wrote two hubs, got to the middle of a third, and then turned to other things. Joe, however, was writing a book!

I need to apologize for my own lack of dedication and for the fact that I found it downright annoying that someone was actually serious about writing. I imagine you in heaven with Evie and other characters from your book and all your creative energy flowing out to your Perry County. Alabama writers. Thanks Joe. I'm praying that your book will soon be published and that all the things that were filling up your heart to say, will be said.