"Pretend I'm not here," Marilyn says to a few of them as they lounge on Angela's porch. She lifts her camera. "Beautiful. You all look beautiful."

To understand lifelong friendships, sometimes you have to go back to a time before any of those friends were even born. And so in a way, Marilyn's connection to the Ames girls can be traced back to September 25, 1960.

That day, her parents decided to drive her four older siblings to a friend's farm sixty miles north of Ames. It was meant to be a fun excursion on a bright Sunday morning, a chance for the kids to ride a tractor, check out the inside of a barn, and pa.s.s by thousands of acres of cornfields. Dr. McCormack was always trying to expose his kids to the wider world, to help them appreciate nature. This was just another one of those adventures.

The McCormacks' oldest child, Billy, then a few weeks shy of his seventh birthday, had been sitting in the third row of the station wagon, the row facing backward. That allowed him to smile and wave at all the Sunday morning drivers on the road behind them, while the corn whizzed by out the side windows.

When they left Ames, Marilyn's mom was in the front seat. But at about the halfway point, she decided to take a nap and switched places with Billy. He got in the front pa.s.senger seat, put on his seat belt-the car hadn't come with seat belts, but Dr. McCormack had them installed-and they continued driving.

The family was on a gravel road about a mile from the farmhouse when a fifteen-year-old boy in his parents' car appeared out of nowhere and slammed, broadside, into Dr. McCormack's car. Because it was September, the cornstalks were near their tallest point, obstructing the view at that intersection. An experienced driver, familiar with the dangers on rural roads, would have known to be cautious at such an intersection. But the boy had his foot hard on the gas; police later estimated he was traveling ninety miles an hour.

Each member of the McCormack family was seriously injured in the collision. Sara, age five, had a forehead wound. Three-year-old Polly had a ruptured spleen. One-year-old Don was bleeding profusely from the back of his head. Mrs. McCormack had a shattered collarbone. Everyone had multiple lacerations. The boy who had driven the other car was also badly injured.

The McCormacks' front pa.s.senger door had taken the brunt of the impact. As a result, Billy, still buckled in the front seat, was the most severely hurt. Dr. McCormack, his hands and arms bleeding from windshield gla.s.s, his ribs cracked from the steering wheel, pulled his son from the car, and called upon all his medical knowledge to try to save him. For an hour, he hunched over the boy on that gravel road, attempting to stop the bleeding, to make sense of the internal injuries, to talk to his son. Ambulances arrived, and some of Dr. McCormack's medical colleagues sped in from Ames to offer their help. By the time they got there, Billy had been p.r.o.nounced dead at the scene.

A story about the accident ran on the front page of the next day's Ames Daily Tribune Ames Daily Tribune. The top of the page was dominated by a photo of two horribly damaged cars smashed together. It was hard to tell which car was which, given all the twisted metal. The headline: "Accident Fatal to Ames Boy."

The story mentioned that tall cornstalks at the intersection were a factor, and that the boy in the other car was driving illegally. He had a school permit, allowing him to drive only on a direct route from his house to school. There was no explanation given for what the boy was doing on that rural road; the scene of the accident was about two hours from his home.

The three younger McCormack children recovered, and Mrs. McCormack forced herself to focus her emotional energy on being grateful for that. Most of the time, she did not allow herself to feel guilty for switching seats with Billy just before the crash. Her reasoning was this: Had she died in the front seat, she would have left Dr. McCormack to raise all of their children alone. As she saw it, her life was spared because her surviving children needed a mother. And so the accident left her doubly committed to motherhood.

At first, Dr. McCormack had great trouble coping with his son's death. He asked that all photos of Billy be removed from the family room of their house; it hurt too much for him to look at them every day. He couldn't bring himself to talk about Billy, either, and it upset him when well-intentioned people asked questions about his son or shared a memory of him. Years later, he'd become known in Iowa medical circles for his comforting bedside manner and his pioneering efforts to help people accept and live with loss. His hard journey to that role began with Billy's death.

All grieving families struggle to find relief from their pain, and at some point in the months after the accident, Dr. and Mrs. McCormack developed a sense of what might help them. Their family felt so terribly out of balance. Maybe their three surviving children needed another sibling. Maybe they needed another child to love. Dr. McCormack, then thirty-five years old, decided he would try to reverse his vasectomy.

Marilyn and her father, Dr. McCormack

Back then, such operations were primitive and usually didn't work, but the decision to try gave Dr. McCormack a sense of purpose. In the summer of 1961, he flew to Rochester, New York, to have his first operation. It failed. In the spring of 1962, he flew to Eureka, California, to meet another surgeon, who was then doing experimental work in vasectomy reversals. Dr. and Mrs. McCormack told no friends or loved ones what they were trying to accomplish. They explained the out-of-town trips as business meetings.

That 1962 operation seemed to work. The couple waited. That summer, Mrs. McCormack became pregnant.

On April 8, 1963, Marilyn was born.

Marilyn knows well that she was brought into this world to deliver life to a family still grieving death. From childhood on, she saw this as both a responsibility and a gift. And today, as she looks back, she realizes that the gripping circ.u.mstances of her birth helped shape her friendships.

It's understandable that she often thought of herself as an outsider among the Ames girls. When the others were making questionable decisions-about drinking or having secret parties or ignoring schoolwork-she'd sometimes feel too guilty to partic.i.p.ate. She never wanted to disappoint her parents or lie to them. How could she? Before she was born, they had wanted her so badly. She'd have to be an ingrate not to honor that.

At times, that made her seem prissy and subdued. A prude in a pageboy haircut. Some of the other girls would roll their eyes when they talked about her. But she stood firm. "I feel lucky to be alive," she'd tell herself, "and so I need to take life seriously."

In the diary she kept all through junior high and high school, she sometimes wondered why she was even part of that group of eleven girls. Some of them were too wild. Their behavior with boys and alcohol didn't always feel right to her. On too many weekends, the Ames girls were hanging out with guys who seemed to have nothing intelligent to say. She got tired of sitting around, listening to boys brag about drinking too much and throwing up; they called it "the Technicolor yawn," and thought they were so clever. Marilyn briefly dated one boy who set out to prove how macho he was by cutting the seat belts out of his car. He figured girls were turned on by guys who lived dangerously. Actually, Marilyn thought he was cute for sure, but after too many remarks like that, she knew he was a loser. And that made her question her friendships, too: Why did some of the other Ames girls seem so happy hanging out with dim bulbs like that?

Marilyn also was unhappy that the other Ames girls weren't being inclusive socially. Other girls at school didn't like it. She'd vent about the Ames girls' cliquishness in her diary. "I hate being identified with them!" she wrote at one point.

And yet at the same time, she saw something she admired in each of the girls-an open heart or a sense of playfulness or a contagious urge for adventure. She had an ability to notice people's positive traits. In that respect she was like her dad, who would say he could find the good in anyone. And so she remained with the group, even though at times she'd hold herself off to the side.

It's not surprising that she felt closest to Jane Gradwohl, who in her own way, as the only Jewish girl in the group, knew what it felt like to be a bit of an outsider. Jane and Marilyn were part of the eleven, but also in their own two-person orbit. They had met as ten-year-olds in a local theater production of Hansel and Gretel Hansel and Gretel. Jane was cast as Gretel, and Marilyn was jealous and annoyed. She got over it.

By eighth grade, Marilyn and Jane were confidants. They were a good match, too: Both were a little slower than the other girls socially, a little nerdier, more academic. Like others among the Ames girls, they came from families where matters of culture and the arts were regular dinner-table conversation. ( Jane's father, the anthropology professor, got his Ph.D. from Harvard; her mom was a social worker.) So Marilyn and Jane, especially, felt comfortable talking to each other about cla.s.sical music or ancient Greek architecture or silent movies. They sometimes felt like black-and-white throwbacks in a town teeming with Technicolor yawns.

As their friendship blossomed, they both felt the need to mark their connection. Early in high school, they bought each other a matching star sapphire necklace. One necklace was engraved: "MM Love, JG." The other read: "JG Love, MM." They were always trading notes in which they gushed about their feelings for each other. Looking back at it now, they find the mushiness almost embarra.s.sing. Jane has a sc.r.a.pbook from high school, and glued into it is a Hallmark card Marilyn had picked out for her. Hallmark had written: "Our relationship is so strong because we are completely truthful with each other in every word and thought, and because we trust each other as equals in every aspect of life."

They had their own playlist of background music by Cat Stevens, Dan Fogelberg, Hall and Oates, Bread-each song reminding them of a shared laugh or an unrequited crush.

Marilyn told Jane about the first boy to kiss her on her ear and her neck. "It felt so warm and tingly," she explained. "I could fall asleep holding him. I really could." Later, when the boy told her, "I don't like you s.e.xually, but we can be friends," she cried to Jane.

Jane and Marilyn, t hen and now.

There were times when the phone rang and Marilyn's heart would jump; maybe it was the boy she was hoping to hear from. Invariably it turned out to be Jane on the other end, but Marilyn's disappointment lasted just a moment before she'd perk up, because hey, it was Jane.

The trust between them was total. Well, almost total. In one of Marilyn's diary entries junior year, after she had scribbled on and on about how "I just can't figure out guys," she suddenly added an aside: "Jane, you're probably reading this. Let me tell you. I DON'T GET ALL THE GUYS! Believe me! They don't like me more than you!"

Marilyn confided in Jane about Billy, the brother she never knew, but she didn't talk much about him to the other girls. A part of her felt uncomfortable with the topic. She remembered what happened one day in elementary school. There had been a girl outside their group who knew the whole story of the car accident and the meaning of the pregnancy that followed. One day, the girl got angry at Marilyn for reasons no one can recall, and blurted out: "I wish your brother had never died, because if he were alive, then you wouldn't be here!"

Marilyn's father was the sort of man who could explain what made kids say such things and why they needed to be forgiven for it. He was pediatrician to several of the girls in Marilyn's group, and he served as a wise counselor to them. "When I was a kid, he was the smartest person I had ever met," says Jane, "just a total renaissance man."

When Karla, Jane, Jenny and Karen were newborns, making their first office visits to Dr. McCormack, he talked about how mothers often held babies as if they were delicate objects. Then they would hand their babies over to Dr. McCormack, who flopped the girls from back to front, front to back, as if they were pancakes on the griddle. "Don't worry," he said. "It's fine. They're not as fragile as you think." Some mothers were startled, but also relieved by his words. He enjoyed dispensing advice any way he could. Jenny's mother was taken with the signs he'd post in his examining rooms. "Ant poison is dangerous," read one. "Better to have ants than poisoned children." She thought of Dr. McCormack one day when she discovered Jenny's brother had eaten a cracker with ants on it.

The girls went to Dr. McCormack all through their childhoods, and they have sweet memories of checkups with him. Karen appreciated the time he told her mother that kids needn't eat all the food on their plates. Dr. McCormack was amused by the clean-plate-club fixation of parents in the 1960s. "Relax," he told Karen's mom. "Most kids end up getting the proper nutrition to stay healthy. Their bodies just know what they need. Offer them three square meals a day, but you don't have to force-feed them." When Karla went to see Dr. McCormack, her mother would marvel at how he never seemed rushed. He calmly answered every question. It was as if Karla were the only patient he'd see all day.

He also made a point of being honest. In those days, many doctors believed that if they didn't mention or acknowledge pain, kids wouldn't feel it or focus on it. But Dr. McCormack gave it to kids straight: "This shot is going to hurt." It was refreshing to find an adult who cared enough not to sugarcoat things and talk down to children.

As a kid, Jane loved to play doctor. But unlike girls today, she never thought to give herself the role of the doctor. Instead, she'd always a.s.sign herself the part of "Dr. McCormack's nurse." She spent countless hours in her fantasy world of a pediatrician's office, saying things like, "Yes, Dr. McCormack, I'll take the baby's temperature for you."

Some of the girls understood that Dr. McCormack was more than just a neighborhood pediatrician, but except for Jane, most didn't know the full extent of his accomplishments. In the 1960s, he had invented a respirator that helped premature babies with underdeveloped lungs survive. Later, he invented a warming blanket used to transport sick infants between hospitals.

He was way ahead of his time on social issues, too. He pa.s.sionately advocated the idea of bringing s.e.x education into Iowa school districts and even into preschools. He felt that kids at the youngest ages should be given information about their bodies and their feelings for the opposite s.e.x. "Don't teach children to feel shame over their genitalia," he'd say, "or they'll harbor that shame as they grow older." He used words that made Iowans blush, but even those who disagreed with him, and there were many, would say they respected his pa.s.sion. (The Ames girls' parents tended to be pretty enlightened and never took issue with him.) Dr. McCormack was described by others as a "people collector," because he was so engaged in learning about people, asking them to share the details of their lives. He looked for what was special in everyone, including Marilyn's friends. He'd ask for their opinions about the hostages in Iran or about feminism, and he'd look at them like their answers really mattered to him. He also was good at offering advice that made the girls think. "When you grow up and have kids of your own," he'd say, "always try to treat them a couple of years older than they are. They'll rise to the occasion." Marilyn once had a party and Diana decided to smoke a cigar. No one had told her not to inhale, and soon enough, she was wheezing and sick to her stomach. Marilyn ran up to her parents' bedroom and got her dad, who grabbed his stethoscope and helped Diana through it. Whether Marilyn's friends spent too much time in the sun or had too much to drink or had questions about menstruation-whatever-Marilyn's dad was someone to turn to, and he was there for them without being condescending or judgmental.

Maybe that's why Marilyn, of all the Ames girls, was often the most willing to confess her sins to her parents. Her father just seemed able to put things in perspective. Once, during a Christmas vacation, Marilyn's parents weren't home and Marilyn had some of the girls over. Boys came, too, and soon it was a full-fledged party, with drinking and making out and too many kids coming and going. When it was over, Marilyn cleaned up perfectly. She made sure the Christmas tree and decorations were exactly right. The place was spotless. And that's when she noticed: There was a large ugly crack in the plate-gla.s.s window of the family room.

She was horrified. She asked Jane what she should do. Should she confess to her parents that she had a party? Jane, a habitual good girl herself, argued for honesty, and Marilyn agreed. Marilyn couldn't live with herself if she didn't tell her dad right away. He was on call at the hospital emergency room, and she went to see him. "I did something very wrong," she told him, and then it all came out in one run-on confession. "I had a party, Dad, with lots of kids, I'm so sorry, and something happened, the plate-gla.s.s window in the family room is broken, really, Dad, I don't know what to say, except that I'll pay whatever I have to pay to fix it."

Her father listened to her story without saying a word. Then he shrugged. "Well, I know you learned something from this whole experience," he said. "I bet you won't do it again." He told her he'd see if their homeowners' insurance policy would cover the damage. Just before she left, he gave her a hug and told her he loved her and appreciated that she'd been honest with him.

As soon as Marilyn walked in the house and saw the window again, she burst into tears-tears of relief that this was off her chest and that her father had been so forgiving and understanding. Her older sister Sara asked why she was crying, and Marilyn pointed to the window. Sara took a closer look. "Well, what do you know?" she said. Turned out, this "crack" was actually a long strand of tinsel from the McCormacks' Christmas tree that had somehow adhered to the plate-gla.s.s window. Maybe some kid had soaked it with beer and stuck it there. Whatever had happened, there was no crack in the window at all. Marilyn called her father. She called Jane. She also called herself an idiot for confessing so quickly and unnecessarily. She could have gotten away with the whole party! And yet, a good part of her was glad she had gone to see her dad about this. She had learned something about him, about how he'd react when she disappointed him. At the same time, he had learned something about her and her conscience.

Hearing about how Dr. McCormack reacted to Marilyn's lapses left the other Ames girls envious. Somehow her dad was a mixture of square and cool-sort of like Marilyn. In their own homes, some of the girls had to go to diabolical lengths to keep their parents in the dark about their activities. More than once, they'd impersonate their own mothers on the phone, to give rea.s.suring explanations about what they were up to. Once, Kelly wanted to go to Iowa's Lake Okoboji with Karla and two male friends. They planned to stay by themselves in a summer home owned by one of the boy's parents. Understandably, Kelly's mother wanted to know: "Will his parents be there?" Kelly told her: "Oh yeah, for sure. Just call Karla's mom. She has the details."

Kelly quickly called Karla, told her to expect the call, and hung up. Two minutes later, the phone rang at Karla's house. "h.e.l.lo, this is Mrs. Derby," Karla said in her best mature-woman's voice. She proceeded to rea.s.sure Kelly's mom. "Don't worry about a thing. Kelly will be fine." Kelly's mother said she appreciated the call, and off the girls went.

The girls knew Marilyn was too much of a Goody Two-shoes to try something like that. But they also knew that part of what attracted her to the larger group was her unstated urge to be in the vicinity of thrill-seekers. She was a funny mix: careful, reserved, prudish. And yet she had a longing for adventure. She also had a father who, given his eagerness to teach s.e.xuality, seemed to be giving her more than a few green lights.

The girls, of course, found that side of him fascinating and quirky. One day, when they were in their teens, he sat some of them down in his family room for a s.e.x education speech. He used a pointer and diagrams on the chalkboard he kept there, and spoke so frankly that the girls blushed. They still giggle about it today. They have shorthand references for what happened that night: "Marilyn's Father's S-E-X Talk" and "The Day We Got Too Much New Information." Cathy recalls leaving Marilyn's house shaking her head and saying to the other girls, "Wow, what was that? Did that just happen? Did you hear what I heard?"

Marilyn's father was unlike most of the other girls' parents in another respect. Not only did he understand the hormonal urges of teens, he also believed in accommodating them-within reason. There was the time Marilyn was setting up for a party, this one with her parents' permission, and her dad offered a suggestion. "You need more than one couch over there by the fireplace," he said. "Pull a couple more couches over there. You can't have just one couple getting cozy."

Kelly's father, the junior-high guidance counselor, oversaw s.e.x education presentations at school a.s.semblies. For years, teachers had made fumbling attempts at addressing the issues. Too often, however, they spoke cryptically, confusing the kids. Proof of that would come during the question-and-answer sessions that followed the talks. Once, a seventh-grader raised his hand and asked: "When adults want to have babies, where do they go to have s.e.x? Do they go to a doctor's office and do it under the doctor's supervision?"

Such clueless questions convinced Kelly's dad that students needed more explicit information. He decided that Dr. McCormack was the man for the job. Dr. McCormack was happy to come to the school with his diagrams and slides. He spoke all about how s.e.x was enjoyable, how feelings of love enhanced it, how using contraception was crucial. He delivered all the key words without flinching. "It's healthy to have s.e.x," he'd say, and the kids paid close attention. By the end of his talks, they certainly knew they'd never have to go to a doctor's office for supervised s.e.x.

For Marilyn, it was exciting being her father's daughter, but it wasn't always easy. For one thing, there were high expectations. Her older siblings all performed well in school. She felt she had no choice but to equal them. And she was always aware that adults she met could be the parents of her dad's patients. Being "the doctor's daughter" could feel like a burden, especially when some of the other Ames girls seemed to care more about good times than what adults thought of them.

At the same time, Marilyn was enormously proud of the impact her father was having on his patients and community. One of Dr. McCormack's patients was Jane's older brother, who in tenth grade was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. Dr. McCormack oversaw the boy's treatment and was a rea.s.suring presence for Jane's worried parents. A bond developed between the two families that remained in place for decades. Maybe it was because Dr. McCormack had lost a son-and his children had lost a brother-that he gave so much of himself to this case. Jane's brother survived and is a doctor himself today, crediting Dr. McCormack as his role model.

When they were young, both Jane and Marilyn knew that part of what they loved about each other was how comfortable they felt with each other's family. They would invite one another on week-long summer vacations. They could raid each other's refrigerator without asking permission, or lounge around each other's house in their pajamas all day, or take over each other's kitchen to cook whatever concoction struck them at the moment. Marilyn's diaries are filled with detailed descriptions of meals she and Jane made together, often serving them to their families. Almost always, Marilyn ended her culinary tales with the same word and punctuation: "Yum!"

It was rea.s.suring to both girls to know that there were people outside of their immediate families who loved them and wanted the best for them. In fact, all of the Ames girls' parents had a similar connection with at least one or two or three of the girls.

Given her attachment to Jane and her family, Marilyn was curious to learn about Judaism. Jane's father was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and unlike most Jewish-Americans, he had roots in the United States going back to the early 1840s. Two of his great-grandfathers fought in the Civil War, one for the North and one for the South.

Jane's mother, Hanna, was not American-born. She left n.a.z.i Germany in 1937, just shy of her second birthday, and her family settled in Lincoln, where there were about five hundred Jewish families. Hanna's family was lucky. Many other relatives, including her father's parents, were unsuccessful in their quest to obtain exit permits and visas. During the late 1930s and early 1940s, they wrote increasingly desperate letters to children and cousins who had emigrated to the United States, Palestine, Egypt, Cuba and Argentina, seeking their a.s.sistance in surmounting the bureaucratic hurdles. More than a dozen of these relatives never escaped and died in concentration camps. Some fifteen hundred of their letters remained boxed up at Jane's grandmother's house, their pleas too painful to talk about. (In more recent years, Jane's parents began translating the letters and presenting the family's story in schools, helping to explain the Holocaust.) Jane's parents knew each other as toddlers in Lincoln and began dating in high school. They married in 1957 and moved to Ames in 1962, when Jane's dad was hired at Iowa State. There were only about twelve Jewish families in town then, which was a challenge. On the East or West Coasts of the United States, Jews could drop their kids off at well-staffed Hebrew schools. They could nod off during services in giant synagogues, letting the rabbis and cantors lead their services. But in Ames, Jews had to roll up their sleeves and get involved-reading the Torah, crafting sermons, taking turns teaching the community's few kids at Sunday school, keeping Judaism alive. "If we're going to be Jewish in Ames, we have to do it all ourselves," Jane's father would explain to Marilyn. "There's no magical religious specialist to do it for us. But that's good. Because it forces us to figure out why we're here and what we believe. In Ames, we know who we are, because in a way, we've chosen to be Jews."

In the 1960s, some Ames residents had never even met a Jew before, and a few would say objectionable things. A town leader once announced at a public hearing that he had gotten a great price from a supplier. "I was able to Jew him down," he said proudly, and couldn't understand why a Jewish woman in attendance found his remarks offensive. Mostly, though, the Christians in town were welcoming and accommodating, and Jane rarely felt self-conscious about being Jewish. One big reason for this was that the other Ames girls seemed unfazed by her religion. Especially when they were young, it hardly even registered with them.

For years, the tiny Jewish congregation in Ames held services in the lounge of a Baptist church. Later, as the Jewish population grew to sixty families, they moved into a former bowling alley. Jane didn't have a bat mitzvah. Instead, she was confirmed at age fifteen, with the Ames girls at the ceremony. The confirmation was a reminder to them that Jane was different, and they were curious and respectful; for some of the girls, so accustomed to church, it was as if they were given entree into a secret society.

Dr. McCormack was a spiritual man whose faith was based on the wonder of life and the daily practice of the Golden Rule, rather than the precepts of organized religion. He appreciated differences in people's beliefs, and would tell Jane and her parents that he admired the Jewish people because so many of them valued education and had stable families.

Marilyn liked to ask Jane questions about Judaism. She followed along closely when she was invited to Pa.s.sover seders at Jane's house, and she thought of Jane when she stepped into the world beyond Ames and saw hostility toward Jews. When Marilyn was sixteen, she went alone to Europe for a summer tour, and made a stop at the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. Stepping through the bookcases to the Frank family hideaway, she began crying, unable to get Jane out of her head. That night in her journal, she described how enraged she felt. She had the first homicidal urges of her life. If anyone ever comes for Jane and her family, she vowed, "I will kill them first!"

For Jane and Marilyn, being exposed to each other's family offered not only lessons in cultural differences, but also in how families overcome obstacles in their own way. Jane saw firsthand that in the decades after losing his son, Dr. McCormack was able to persevere and develop this contagious positive att.i.tude. He came to look at life as a glorious adventure, and he threw himself into hiking, skiing, geology. One of his favorite words was "magnificent." "Did you catch the sunset tonight? It was magnificent!" "That concerto? Magnificent." "Marilyn, your friends look magnificent!"

And when Marilyn was feeling vulnerable or afraid, Jane always encouraged her to talk to her dad. So often, Dr. McCormack knew just the right words to say. A few nights before Marilyn was about to head off to college, she went into her parents' bedroom. Her dad was there alone, and she asked if he had a minute.

She'd been accepted at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. Jane would be going to Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. "I'm not sure I want to go so far away," Marilyn said flatly, and a good part of her meant it. "I don't know that I can be away from my friends or from Ames. I just don't know that I can be away from home."

She was also worried about how her parents would cope with her absence. "Won't you be sad when I go?"

"Sad?" her dad replied. "I won't be sad. Not sad at all. In fact, I can hardly wait!"

He told her that he was thrilled when he thought about the "magnificent" adventures that awaited her. He said her friends, especially Jane, would remain in her heart, and she could write them every day if she wanted to. She could call them from the dorm phone. She could visit them. She could conjure up her happy memories of them. As for Ames, it would always be there, locked in the middle of Iowa, waiting for her. "Mom and I will be here, too," he said.

Marilyn was near tears. "But you'll be so far away from me."

"No, don't think of it that way," her dad told her. "Here's what we'll do. We're going to keep you at the end of our fishing line. And if you ever need anything, you just give a little tug and we'll reel you back in."

On the day that Jane got married in 1989, with Marilyn standing at her side, one of the most meaningful moments for her was just after she walked down the aisle, when Dr. McCormack gave her one of his heartfelt bear hugs. He was a man who hugged like he meant it, an uncommon trait for a man of his generation. And in the whir of emotion that surrounded his hug, a clear thought came into Jane's head: "I've really arrived at a good place, haven't I? I made the right choice in a man, didn't I? It must be true, because here's one of my heroes giving me all of his support, all of his approval."

When some of the other girls reached adulthood, they would remark to each other that they could never find a doctor they really liked. They figured out why. No one had Dr. McCormack's bedside manner. No one cared about them like Marilyn's father had.

After the girls started having children of their own, they'd take their kids to pediatricians. It didn't always feel right. One day Karen, now living in Philadelphia, called Marilyn. "I want a doctor for my kids who would be like your father was to me," she said. Marilyn had been having her own issues finding a good pediatrician for her children. She told Karen, "I'm searching for that, too."

By the time Marilyn had her kids-two sons and a daughter-her father was no longer practicing medicine. His retirement was a bit premature because, in the late 1980s, he began showing early signs of dementia. He quit his practice unexpectedly one day in 1989. A boy had come to his office with a minor problem-strep throat or an ear infection-and as usual, Dr. McCormack prescribed amoxicillin. A few hours later, the pharmacist called him, a bit concerned. Dr. McCormack had written the wrong dosage on the prescription, and luckily the pharmacist had caught the error.

Dr. McCormack, who had written thousands of amoxicillin scrips over the years, knew his mistake was a memory issue. "I don't ever want to hurt a child," he told Marilyn's mom when he got home that night. In that moment, he decided to retire, and he never worked as a doctor again. Eventually, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

The disease came upon him gradually, but given his knowledge of medicine, he was well aware of the long, lonely good-bye that awaited him and his family. Marilyn became determined to hold on to whatever gifts his mind could still offer. He was a man who spent his life imparting perfectly stated life lessons. And so, in his final years, Marilyn would sometimes bring a tape recorder and sit with him. "Give me some of your wisdom before you can't give it to me anymore," she'd say to him, and for a while, he was able to answer her.

He'd tell her things like: "When you see your kids, remember me." Another time he told her: "Remember the things I did for you that made you happy, and do those things for your own children."

Marilyn found herself looking back at both her father's life and her own. She tracked down that doctor in California, by then an old man, who had performed her dad's vasectomy reversal. She sent him a simple friendly Christmas card, with no explanation about who she was, but he recognized her name and wrote back to her. He told her he recalled her father well, and even said that he remembered the day in April 1963 when she was born.

By the time her dad got sick, Marilyn and her husband and kids (and her two sisters) had long lived near Minneapolis. She and her siblings convinced her parents to move there so they could help care for their father.

Marilyn had made new friends in Minnesota, and they were kind and well-meaning women who would often ask how her dad was doing. But they knew him only as an old man with Alzheimer's. They had no sense of him in his years as a doctor, when he mattered to his community, when he felt free to counsel Marilyn's friends because he had cared for them all their lives-and because he cared about them.

During the years her father was fading, Marilyn usually felt fairly strong. But when she would reunite with the girls from Ames, she felt surprisingly emotional. The first sight of them would bring her to tears. In time, she figured out why. They reminded her of her dad when he was vigorous and in his prime. Whenever she talked to Jane, who became a college psychology professor in Ma.s.sachusetts, they could return together in their minds to the McCormacks' summer house on Lake Minnewaska in Minnesota.

In his final years, Dr. McCormack's lucid moments became rarer and rarer. Still, there were flashes of exuberance that reminded his loved ones of who he had been. One day he was in the car, and Marilyn's mom was driving and talking to him. She was so engaging and, as always in his eyes, so beautiful. He smiled and stopped her, mid-sentence. Then he spoke to her wistfully but firmly: "You're a fascinating woman. But I'm married."

Dr. McCormack died in Minneapolis in June 2004. He was seventy-nine. Marilyn's new friends from Minnesota offered their condolences, gave her hugs, wished her well, and told her they'd be there for her. She appreciated that.

But the girls from Ames-their condolences were so different. It was as if they hardly had to share any words with Marilyn. "Her new friends, they didn't get it," says Jane. "They might have met Dr. McCormack in his last few years, but they didn't know the real man, the man he was. And we did. We knew him as this completely phenomenal human being. And so we knew. We knew what Marilyn had lost."

3.

Karla.

Karla is cranky. For starters, it's too loud for her. The other girls are chattering away, getting caught up on each other's life and children, laughing long and hard-and loud, so loud. For Karla, this reunion at Angela's is sensory overload.

She's also not getting enough sleep. Most of the other girls are staying up late, talking and talking, dragging her into their conversations. Because the reunion will last only four days, some of them see sleep as a waste of precious time. Karla, on the other hand, needs her rest in order to function.

"Let me go to bed," she says every hour or so, starting at ten P.M. But her protestations are ignored. The others figure, and they're not all wrong, that she doesn't really want to go to sleep, either. She'd miss too much. (Besides, as Cathy jokes: "The fear of being talked about will keep you up." Jenny, who got to the reunion eighteen hours after everyone else, called ahead: "Don't talk about me until I get there.") Karla apologizes for being cranky. Truth is, she's just being straightforwardly Karla. She needs her coffee. She needs her sleep. She needs them to quiet down.

There's another factor at work, too. Not long into the weekend, a part of her is absolutely ready to go home to see her kids. That's always been an issue for her at these reunions. In the days before cell phones, the girls remember her standing at pay phones outside bars or restaurants, calling home to her kids. Kelly would have to nudge her along: "Come on, Karla, enough! Get off already."

"We're all moms who completely love our kids," Kelly says. "But Karla, wow, she really really loves her kids." loves her kids."