Melinda Ketelsen, the wife of my dear friend Dean Ketelsen, passed away last night after a three-year battle with cancer. She is second from left in pink, and Dean is in orange. Dean has documented her heroic battle with the disease on his blog, and her endless regimes of chemotherapy. You may know Dean from all his wonderful comments on my blog. He is a legend in Tucson with his outreach work in astronomy, and he works in the Mirror Lab, finishing 8 meter astronomical mirrors for observatories. This photograph is the result of a trip that Stan Honda, to my left, and I took to Tucson back in April, to spend a week doing astronomical things with Dean, and my long-time friend Mike Terenzoni, in center of photo. We got to meet Melinda, spend time visiting, and have some dinners together, and she was such a lovely person. My heart is saddened.
Ken-
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for your memories of Melinda - it means a lot to me that she touched you too. I've been monitoring her facebook account after I put an announcement of her passing and the response has been amazing - literally hundreds of comments, testimonials and photos from the ancient mists of time. The last couple blog posts have some of my observations of her last days, in case anyone is interested...
www.theketelsens.blogspot.com
-Dean
Ken, very nice tribute. As a coincidence I'm wearing that same t-shirt now as I see your blog, while packing in Albuquerque for the trip home. That was a great trip to Tucson made better by meeting Melinda. Thanks, Stan
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