I met Theresa Huber Saunders when Brother Dave, Son Mark, and I stopped by her parents’ home in Cruso, a wide place in the road in the mountains of North Carolina.
The three of us were on our way home from a long weekend in a three-sided shelter at Snowbird — and we looked it. All of us needed a shower.
Cruso was not far out of the way and we had gone by there to pick up Theresa’s younger sister, one of Mark’s classmates at the University of North Carolina, and give her ride back to Chapel Hill. We hadn’t planned to get out of Dave’s Bronco and go in, of course, but Amy Huber, Theresa’s Mom, insisted that we stay for dinner. She had cooked ribs so what we could do.
While we ate, Theresa entertained.
“There are three things mountain people don’t like,” she told us, “and we’re all three: outsiders, foreigners, and Catholics.”
The Hubers, who are Catholic, had moved to Cruso from Miami. Amy was born in Puerto Rico.
* * *
Theresa was a remarkable woman.
Several years later my wife, Donna, and I drove to Cruso to attend a party given by her and her husband, Todd. Nice party I thought, and I wondered how she had been able to pull it off.
***She worked full time as an operating room nurse at Mission Hospital in Asheville.
***She worked part-time as a nurse at a Boy Scouts camp.
***She had to leave the party a little bit early to get to her third job — on weekends, she waited tables at a restaurant.
Oh, one more thing: That Sunday morning, at Mass, Theresa had sung a song she had written and accompanied herself on the guitar.
Postscript: This beautiful woman died on April 5, 2004. She was 41 years old. She was survived by her husband and four children.
NOTE: For another story about Theresa go here.
Coming Friday: The Helper