The Loss Of Ann James (Freelander)
I didn't know Ann personally, and only enjoyed the pleasure of a few emails btween us, but am saddened by her loss and wish to send my sincere condolences to her family and friends. Susi's post: Subject: The List is different this morning We lost one of our own this morning. Ann James has gone on ahead of us and the List is poorer for it. And while I take comfort that she is together again with her precious and beloved Old English Sheepdogs, my reaction is all too typical of those who are left behind. I feel loss. I first noticed Ann on the List by her writing. Like a serrated knife, Ann's musings were deceptive: The blade didn't seem all that sharp on the face of it, but my, how it could cut through a subject. She had, as writers like to say, her own unique "voice:" Acerbic, personal, a little formal but plain spoken, her style made you know you were reading something by her within three sentences. I don't think there is greater praise that one writer can heap on another than that. I'm not sure how Ann noticed me, but one of her first private notes to me had a "Come to Jesus" feel to it. I guess I'd mumbled something about being a Conservative. Why, Ann was a Republican, too! Two conservatives with dry humor who were also writers had found each other on a dog list. Those of us who read Ann's posts routinely knew that at times, she regarded some of what we discussed on the List as a bit silly. But always, always the dogs came first. And we needed that. We needed the voice of someone not wedded to the show scene to bring another perspective into the dialogue. Over the years, I got to know Ann a bit better and she was always a surprise; She'd been a reporter for a prominent newspaper. She'd been married to a famous CNN correspondent and though later divorced, she mourned his untimely death when it splashed across the network news. We suffered with her as her beloved sheepdogs aged and passed on. And when her second husband died, her bereavement was total; Ann was never one to be maudlin, but she was too good a writer for us not to feel the loneliness as she described the now vacant bedroom, the cat's reaction to sudden loss, the sounds that emptiness makes. She took us with her on her journey of filling the voice: Her chronicles of adopting "the wolves" (German Shepherds) were classics. As was the story of Pepe, the Tibetan Terrier who'd been falsely imprisoned. And later still, the Katrina hurricane orphan in the form of a dachsund came into her life. Posts from Ann were like book installments; what would happen next? Sadly, WE know what happened next. And for that reason, I've always regarded death as the ultimate invasion of privacy. We know something so critical, so deeply personal to a person - the time of their death - when usually they don't. And I hate that. I hate when everyone else knows something I don't. When I die is certainly something I would want to know before, say, the UPS guy knows it. But there is it. I suppose by that point, we don't much care. I hope Ann didn't care. I hope all she saw were pretty stars and Victoria and Edward and her late husband as she passed from this world to the next. Rest in peace, Ann. You'll be missed. Susi Makos Pulik |
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| http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hea ... 78189.html
Ann James Freelander, Post reporter, dies at age 77 By JENNIFER LEAHY Former Houston Post reporter Ann James Freelander, 77, died Saturday morning after a brief illness. "Just about anybody who worked in the news industry in the 1960s or 1970s knew Ann," said longtime friend and former colleague George Flynn of the award-winning journalist. "She was one of the first women to cover the police, back when it was a good-ol'-boy system. But she soon won them over, and was one of the best police reporters of all time," said Flynn. Freelander entered journalism in the 1960s. A divorced mother with two young daughters, she began working at the Bay City Tribune and later the Angleton Times. In 1966 she accepted a position with the Houston Post. During her tenure she tackled many sensational stories, including that of a man who fatally poisoned his son with a Pixy Stix on Halloween to collect insurance money and of a devastating ammonia spill. She also reported on the downfall of Frank Sharp and the bloody prison siege in Huntsville. She was also the Post's leading reporter on one of the nation's most sensational stories - the torture and murder of 27 young men over several years by Dean Corll and two teen accomplices. In 1993, 20 years after the crime, she wrote a column on how it still made her angry: "How 27 youngsters could go missing over a period of years with nobody noticing is beyond me. There had to be neighbors of Dean Corll's in all those different places he lived, neighbors who noticed young boys going in that bachelor's apartment and some never coming out alive. Didn't they care? Or did they just think it was none of their business?" A former president of the Houston Press Club, Freelander was a longtime participant in the annual Gridiron Show. Sherrill Montgomery will remember her mother's "magnificent mind, great writing" and, more importantly, that she was a "fantastic mother." Freelander is survived by Montgomery and another daughter, Elizabeth Smith. Her husband, former Houston Post city editor Doug Freelander, died in 2004. |
| Now this is truly sad!!! I knew Ann only from Sheepie on Yahoo! She was an absolute delight! Her writings kept me in stitches, her help with sheepdogs was invaluable.
I didn't know about her second husband, perhaps that's why her epistles disappeared. Was this soon after they moved north of Houston? I have been thinking about her recently, perhaps this was her way of reaching out one last time to us. Good by Ann. |
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