My friend Lyda Ann Thomas died this week. I’m going to miss Lyda Ann. There aren’t many people I’m willing to follow – she was one.

Lyda Ann had no need to make people better than they were so she could love them. She appreciated people; flaws, faults and all. She didn’t tolerate hateful or mean but smart, eccentric, opinionated zealots were embraced.

She was a true Texas woman. In the full meaning of the term. Powerful, with a thin veneer of well behaved. Holds up about as well as our hairspray. She was strong and determined and in possession of a healthy ego.

There was no “leaning in” with Lyda Ann. She had only one posture. Upright on the ground God intended her to occupy. Which as it turned out was a thin strip of land – a barrier island which she mothered with an intensity equal to the storms she weathered.