This week Teressa Stutler Starcher, 68, will be buried a few feet up the hill in the Cooper Cemetery, a rock throw from her homeplace in the backwoods of Little Creek, a place where she spent a lifetime close to her family and neighbors, connected to the small pleasures of life.

I can still heard her lilting voice echoing from hill to hill, or singing for the public at country events.

Her writing was about the smallest incidents of life, roaming free from hill to holler, recalling family and incidents that inspired her to a higher calling, put them to paper.

We shared the same advice given to us by exemplary Calhoun writer Jeanne Wilson as members of a writing group years ago - "Just write."

Paralyzed after a horse riding accident many years ago and confined to a wheel chair, she was cared for by her husband of 48 years, Richard Starcher.

Perhaps most moving beyond her singing and writing, a visit with her was always inspiring, recalling details wrought by People of Place, whose message was always about not giving up - perseverance.

As those kind of people are fast fading, we lift her up to God with eternal memories.