I have an older sister. Her name was June, as you must have guessed from the title of this blog. I use the past tense, was, only because she died in an automobile accident in 1966 – just three months after graduating from college.
She was a straight A student – and a writer. She loved to write. Fiction: short stories, poetry, and plays. Non-fiction: articles for magazines and newspapers. She was the first, that I recall, in our family to have a passion for writing. She would not be the last.
During her final semester of college I had the privilege of staying with June, her husband, and their new-born baby girl, Kristen. Oh, how I wish I could turn back the hands of time. I remember seeing a large three-ring binder filled with poetry, short stories, articles, plays: some finished and some rough drafts. I didn’t take time to real them all. I suppose by now they have long been discarded.
I am writing about June because she had a profound affect on my life, although even I didn’t realize she was leading the way for me to pursue writing.
The first writing-memory I have of her is when she was selected to be the editor of the Nor’wester, the weekly newspaper published by Northwest Junior High School, Kansas City, Kansas. The year was 1956. Half way through the school year, our family moved to Bonner Springs, Kansas When the sponsor (advisor) found out June was moving, she appointed Mike Cogswell to be the second semester editor. I guess my sister hadn’t explained that we would finish the school year at Northwest Junior High. It was a 13 mile commute, but our parents wanted us to have at least that much continuity in our lives.
I must assume that my sister had exhibited some significant experience with writing, or she would never have been selected editor in the first place. But I don’t know what she had done up to that point.
During June’s senior year at Washington High School, Bethel, Kansas, she was editor of the Washingtonian, the high school’s weekly newspaper.
Then June was off to college. She must have dropped out of school (most likely to earn enough money to continue) long enough to help me with a research paper I got to write for senior English. I had completed all the research, but was struggling with just how to begin. The topic was a presentation of the interlinking of the lives of Omar Khayyam and Edward Fitzgerald. She suggested that I begin by comparing them to Rogers and Hammerstein, Addison and Steele, and Abbott and Costello. (I must have copied the first paragraph for my paper verbatim from her suggestion, for even today I do not know who Addison and Steele are.)
Our paths separated after I finished high school. I spent two and a half years abroad. She was just finishing college when I returned and only then can I pick up her story. I believe she had majored in English and minored in journalism. Or, it might be the other way around.
June had entered a play (under the name June Christensen Anderson) she had written, entitled Interview, into the semiannual, one-act play writing contest sponsored by the ASBYU Productions Guild at Brigham Young University. She took first place, for which the play was published in The Wye Magazine, produced by the Productions Guild and performed at the Varsity Theater, and yielded my sister a check for $100. (That was a lot of money back in 1966.)
Then June died in an automobile accident on September 10, 1966, near Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. She was survived by her husband, Mark Anderson and daughter Kristen. Eight months later, a short story entitled Until, was published posthumously (under the name June C. Anderson) in The Relief Society Magazine, a women’s magazine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints..
During the 1964 earthquake in and around Anchorage, Alaska my older brother, Laurie, and a friend had flown into town from Fairbanks to pick up a car. My dad was working downtown in anticipation of the family moving there before long. My brother and his friend picked up my dad, who had been working late, to go to dinner. Had my dad remained working late, which was his pattern since the family was still in Fairbanks, my dad would most likely have died in the collapse of the building he had just left.
June was preparing a article for Reader’s Digest‘s Drama in Real Life. She never finished it. So, she never submitted it.
This blog has been long. Please forgive me for deciding to make it a tribute to my sister, June.
3