Elizabeth Larsen Lukas traversed the better part of the 20th century with determination, grace and style. There is no better way to understand what she accomplished than to read the response to her first job application.
Note the second letter a few months later…what transpired in between?
Let this obituary tell you a bit more about Elizabeth Larsen Lukas’s life…in her own words… As she wrote it!
Betty’s Writings
Here are some selected articles starting with her last.
So long! Farewell! Adios! Goodbye! Adieu!
By Betty Lukas
Palos Verdes Peninsula News
Mar 2, 2016
Sorry to say it is time to leave you. The party has been grand, but it is almost all over. And I am tired.
I am also ill with an ovarian cancer that barely announced its presence. So much for healthy eating and family history.
After a week in my favorite hospital, Little Company of Mary (remember last June?), and after a series of outpatient tests at the diagnostic center that preceded it, every medic with an eye on my chart confirmed the prognosis.
Surgery is not an option, considering my age, which will be 91 on March 5, for those readers who hadn’t known. I never had an interest in surgery. I am back in hospice with the same superior team that served me last year. I am getting pain meds when I need them, plus jelly donuts and éclairs when the urge is overwhelming.
My son Herb even went to Dominique’s one late afternoon and brought me my favorite meal of lamb chops, polenta and asparagus. I provided the Pinot Noir.
My Berkeley son Brian has been in almost constant attendance, growing more and more familiar with the friends who call and make arrangements to visit. And then there’s Maria, my favorite daughter, who splits her time between me and her 125 students at USC. I have been gifted with great bounty. My children are sublime.
The consequences of living a long and ordinarily coherent life provide me with the final personal reward of being grateful, of being able to articulate here and now my gratitude to those who have given me such joy and satisfaction through all these years.
As a parting, favorite basket of thoughts from me to you, I pass along these words of the poet William Blake:
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.
The time has come to take my leave. This is not about replacing Maureen Dowd at the New York Times. I am not bowing out because of that assignment. I am bowing out because I have a new assignment.
Betty Lukas is an award-winning former staff writer for the Palos Verdes Peninsula News and Los Angeles Times, and a regular contributor to the News.
More Writings:
What’s it really worth to tell the truth? by Betty Lukas, PV News | Dec 2, 2015
Buddy by Betty Lukas, PV News| Sept 30, 2015
How much do you know about Hospice by Betty Lukas, PV News| August 5, 2015
Care and feeding of an Ailing columnist by Betty Lukas, PV News| July 1, 2015
Romayne Martin: remember her name by Betty Lukas, PV News| Jan 28, 2010
This is from the book she Co-Authored Peninsula Past
RHE’s Agness Underwood a Newspaper 'Legend’ by Betty Lukas, PV News| 1967
In one of her first professional articles Betty interviews a trailblazing female journalist
Search all of Betty’s articles at the PV News 2010-2016
Betty’s service and contribution to the community is exemplified by the fact that she received a news story Obituary in the local newspaper.
Betty’s life in selected pictures shown at her memorial:
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