When I sat down at my computer a little over a week ago, I opened my Facebook page and received, as most Facebook users probably do, a reminder about birthdays of friends.
November 12, it turns out, was my friend Elizabeth McGhee’s birthday. I smiled and sent a quick message:
‘Happy Birthday, Elizabeth! Make it fabulous!?
If anyone can make a birthday fabulous, Elizabeth is that person.
Five minutes later, I was deleting the message, horrified to learn in a text from a mutual friend that Elizabeth died in a plane crash about 36 hours earlier.
I am still trying to absorb the enormity of this tremendous loss.
Elizabeth was alone when she died, piloting a single-engine plane that went down in Missouri. Radio contact with her was lost shortly after 7:30 p.m., Nov. 10 and searchers found her and the plane about two hours later in Ray County.
What is remarkable about Elizabeth is not the manner in which she died, but the way in which she lived.
Her death was sudden and tragic and she left the Earth far too soon, but oh, how she lived for the 57 years and 363 days she was here!
I met Elizabeth in February 2005 when I was reporting on the 4-H Veterinary Club that she led in Ortonville.
There could not have been a more perfect woman for this job.
Elizabeth was not only a veterinarian, but the self-proclaimed ‘encourager of weirdness? was a passionate teacher. She so obviously connected with the kids and it was a natural inclination it seemed, as I learned she was the mother of nine, all of whom she homeschooled.
Just four months later, I was writing a story about the 4-H Aviation Club, which Elizabeth also led. She had received her pilot’s license in May 2004 and bought a Cessna after her children expressed an interest in learning to fly. True to her nature, she supported them, as well as encouraged me to take my first flight in a small plane with my young daughter while I was reporting on the story at the airport.
Elizabeth had a way of inspiring people and she was a journalist’s dream? providing many interesting stories, including competing in beauty pageants and placing as a runner-up in the Mrs. Michigan pageant, with a message for women that it’s OK to have a messy house and that kids don’t always do what you expect them to do, but to stick with it as children are worth the work.
She was involved in her community, but she wasn’t to be contained in her efforts to make a difference and her reach spread far? including all the way to Africa.
Elizabeth made the journey at least once yearly to a continent in which medical care is scant in countries such as Mauritania, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. She treated people diagnosed with HIV, malaria and leprosy. She was present at amputations. She saw malnourished children. And still, despite all the heartbreak, she returned again and again.
After a 2012 trip she took with her daughter Catherine, she told me, ‘Instead of leaving a legacy, I want to live it… It revamps your whole perspective of what you’re doing in life and why. It means everything to see my daughter learn that the secret of living is giving.?
Elizabeth always kept an immense sense of gratitude. She knew her blessings and wanted to share them.
‘If you’re not living the dream, you’re dead and just don’t know it? I’m just a vet from Ortonville. My job is to build the dream in other people,? she said.
Her selflessness disregarded any possible danger. During the Ebola outbreak in Africa in 2014, I spoke with Elizabeth for a story just two months after she had returned from west Africa. She hadn’t seen anyone with the virus, but was ready to return if invited to care for such patients.
That was Elizabeth. Brave. Fearless. Giving. Living.
Fate is the hunter, she once told me. Elizabeth wasn’t afraid of dying. Death comes for everyone. The fear is not really living. Even as we mourn the loss of Elizabeth, we can be grateful she knew how to truly live.