Reflections - Nancy
Lenten Rose
May 20, 1949 - January 19, 2022
Nancy, head township auditor for almost thirty years, stood at her kitchen table after we’d completed the audit my first year and pointed her arthritic finger at the numbers on a twenty page report. "These are the numbers you girls found for me.” I was clueless, but she was ecstatic. “Everything balanced.” She didn’t take credit for the many sleepless nights she’d put in searching ledgers for errors that blocked our balances.
After four years, when her memory started to fail, she trusted me to help her find glitches in the records. Teaching me to audit by immersing me in numbers was a gift. She also gave me hazelnuts from her backyard, a bolt of denim fabric with tiny red roses, and bags of her favorite bakery donuts. The best gift was her friendship.
I planted an Ice N’ Roses Red Lenten Rose in the front yard for Nancy. The rose blooms around auditing time each year.
