May 9th is the birthday of Kathleen Lawrence, wife of Jim's West Point classmate and brother, Kerry Lawrence, Esq.
Kat is more than just a classmate's wife. She has served the Academy and the Nation for over a decade as a mentor at the class-sponsored National Conference on Ethics in America at West Point every year. She is a clinical psychotherapist who provides business consulting, coaching, mediation services, couple, child and family therapy and parent coaching through her private practice in Washington.
Jim offers this:
"Kat helps suffering humanity every day and is one of the most compassionate and empathetic and gentle souls I have ever met. She loves my classmate Kerry, who is as big a knucklehead as all the Brothers, despite his many accomplishments (he is our class's James Madison, having single-handedly written the class constitution), with all her big heart. Though hit with a debilitating condition in her youth, she fights it and succeeds on a day-to-day basis with remarkable courage and composure."
Jim discovered something astonishing about our familial connection with Kat:
"Anne and Kat and Bitsy are great friends, and when I see them together, I am struck by how much they are so like the groups of Irish women we grew up with--their speech and mannerisms and laughter. Then I noticed that Kat reminds me startlingly of Boom Boom and when I asked questions, it turns out she is from Clare! And her mother and female relatives are Moloneys, Fitzgeralds, Sheehans and McNamaras! Boom Boom was a Sheehan, and her mother was a Moloney, and her mother was a Fitzgerald, and her mother was a MacNamara! And they are all from Clare! Got to be the same gene pool."
So Happy Birthday, Kathleen, dear and long-time friend, and may you have 58 more healthy ones by the Aunt Joannie Sullivan Law of Longevity Aspiration of 2008.
God bless us and save us and keep us from harm.
Love, Patty & Jim
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