THE PAPER TRAIL (in honor of my sister, Dottie)

Yours a Hickey/Warren tradition,
rife with scholarly ambiton.
Ever gathering essentials
toward attaining your credentials.

On in hope you've struggled forward.
PhD became your coreword.
Brains and money, both required
for that prize that you desired.

But as time and luck would have it,
health would take that pair, and halve it.
For, when brains were in supply,
then, the money pool was dry.

When at last the money pool
would allow for time in school,
then the gray cell count went broke,
bankrupt by a crippling stroke.

Nothing daunted, on you've read.
Someone lesser would have said:
" 'though my quest has been denied,
none can say I haven't tried."

But, for you it doesn't end here.
'though the old gray cells won't mend, dear,
in my mind you'll always be:
D. G. Talbot, PhD.

Bill Warren

12/21/31