An extraordinary crossing of paths is not a bad way to start a very fruitful 50 year friendship. In the early 1970s I visited the USA for the first time from the UK. One warm Sunday morning I ended up walking past the Rubio house in Normal Road, puffing and lugging an oversize case on my way to the bus station in DeKalb. An invitation to coffee and a lift to the station led much further than I bargained for! By an amazing coincidence, the family had recently returned from a visit to Galway in the west of Ireland. They had stayed just around the corner from the street where I had been born and so started a conversation that lasted until now. The generous act of that accidental meeting also summed up the personalities of Mary and Carlos. We only saw each other twice in the following years when they visited us in Paris and London but that hardly mattered. Frequent letter writing meant we got to know each other very well. And these were no ordinary letters. Mary followed the development of my family, career and aspirations for nearly five decades and we exchanged reflections and feelings through many changes of house and fortune. Her genuine interest in what I, my wife Ann and our children were up to meant she was regularly in our thoughts even though we remained thousands of miles apart. Like all who knew her, we regret her leaving us but rejoice in the thought of a wonderful and long life well lived.