Elizabeth Burkhalter Ruyle

Over the next few months, I'm going to write a few words about the different people for whom we are walking in memory.

"Lizzie" was one of my dearest friends in college. I met her during my Freshman year at the University of San Francisco. Lizzie was elegant, beautiful, intelligent, and possessed great common sense, a rarity among most first year college students. She had a great sense of humor. Most importantly, she was a devout and faithful Catholic.

In our junior year of college, we both chose to do a year abroad at Oxford University. This was the first time I had ever travelled so far away from home. Lizzie knew one thing I didn't: How to cook! She quickly taught me how to make pumpkin pie, and how to freeze dollops of whipped cream so that you could take out just one and put it in your coffee. Often with an additional shot of Grand Marnier, if we were having an evening coffee together. Yum! Lizzie cooked our Thanksgiving dinner and it was fabulous!

Four USF students went to Oxford that year: Monica, Lizzie, Michael and I. I noticed that Michael and Lizzie began to spend more and more time together. By the end of the year they were both deeply in love and they married a few years later.

After that year, I transferred from USF to Holy Cross so that I could finish my studies in Greek and Latin. Lizzie and Mike stayed in San Francisco. When I came back in 1987, it turned out Mike and Lizzie were living only a couple of blocks away from me. We kept in touch over the next few years, but then I moved to Santa Clara to study law and we lost touch.

Years later, I found her again. By that time, they had two beautiful boys and were living in Montana. During our initial telephone call, I asked her how she was and she told me that she had been diagnosed with mesothelioma, a cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. I don't know if it was the pile of asbestos fibers sitting in the living room of the building that we lived in (I kid you not). I don't know if it was because her father might have been a shipbuilder in the Navy (if memory serves). I don't know if it's because USF decided one year to remove all of the asbestos in some of their buildings, while we took classes in them. I guess I'll never know, but in these matters, I've always thought "Why?" was a stupid question.

Elizabeth passed away a few months later at the age of 40. She was survived by her parents, her husband Michael, and their two boys, age 5 and 7. I miss her intelligence, charm, wit and great good sense.

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. May she rest in peace. May all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.