a new year from an unknown past

At the very end of last year 2012, I felt like I was hit with a baseball bat.

When my sister Caren was passing in December, and still in shock, I received a mysterious e-mail from my old Gallery outside Gainesville, FL (who once exhibited my work).  This personal inquiry to the gallery, was directed towards me.  Now, a forwarded e-mail from an unknown person, trying to resolve our mutual and mysterious pasts.

In my early teens, JoAnn McCourtney was my 'godsend'.  Adrift without direction after my mother died - JoAnn became not only my mother, but a dear and loving friend.  My (step-mother) JoAnn died suddenly during my first summer studying abroad.  And, after her death, and my return to the states in 1972, JoAnn's unresolved history became a quest.  My search for her bared little results.  So when that e-mail arrived out of the blue, there were more questions than answers.

JoAnn's niece, Elizabeth Wylie had finally contacted me. We both had a deep interest in this beautiful elusive woman, and both had come at this from opposite sides of a coin. We shared our knowledge - of each of our missing parts. So now, from forty something years ago, most of the pieces started to fit.

PHOTOS:  Elizabeth Wylie's family side of JoAnn's Wylie's early years - and mine, from those incredible and impressionable, later years with JoAnn McCourtney.

JoAnn's parents - Dorothy and Joe Wylie in Oklahoma.

JoAnn and her younger brother Joe.

JoAnn in High School in Oklahoma.

My father and JoAnn in the early sixties.

JoAnn in Sarasota in the mid-sixties

A portrait by Bobby Toombs which hung prominently in her living room on Lido Key.