Sometimes memories are for a lifetime.
Jandy Durand has a house filled with memories of her family — an old barn door and wood ladder, rungs held with baling wire and decorated with hay hooks — but it was an experience more than 30 years ago that triggers thoughts of a friend she still misses dearly.
Jandy graduated from Crest High School in 1984, where she was an eclectic student. Besides being a cracker-jack high jumper, she also participated in forensics. It was during a forensics contest in Iola that she became acquainted with Susan Miller, who competed for Iola High.
“Susan was one of the nicest people I ever met,” Jandy said. Period. No reservations.
Other girls from nearby towns felt the same way and they formed a little friendship ring that quickly came to life at each forensics gathering.
When they learned Susan had been diagnosed with cancer they were impressed by her attitude. She didn’t pander to her illness, rather stayed upbeat, one of the gang.
Despite every treatment known to medicine, nothing could be done to reverse the disease’s progression.
“It doesn’t matter how nice you are or how young you are, it just doesn’t matter” with cancer, Jandy said.
A FEW WEEKS ago, Jandy was helping prepare for the opening of the Heartland Meadows care home when in walked Betty Miller, Susan’s mother, to see how things were going.
Jandy struck up a conversation and after connecting the dots told Betty how often she thought of Susan and how when she was preparing to move to Lawrence for her first year at the University of Kansas, Susan was undergoing treatments for her cancer. By then their life journeys were slipping into different directions.
“I remember the girls (Jandy and others) praying for Susan when she had to miss forensics meets,” Betty said. “They were all so kind to her. It’s amazing how someone can affect others in just 18 years, more than some do in a lifetime.”
That was so true of Jandy’s experience.
“It happens every August,” Jandy said, batting back a tear. “I think about college and about Susan, and how hard she tried to beat cancer.”
Susan Miller died Aug. 29, 1984, at the far too young age of 18.
