Jeannie Michael, born Sept. 11, 1952, daughter of Neva A. and John Paul Michael of Waynesboro Virginia, died Tuesday, March 8 ^th in Hampton, VA. One of three "Michael girls"(Dianna, Sallie), Jeannie lived and learned in locations from the East to West coast. Returning to the state of her birth, she reconnected with family in coastal Virginia and lived there until her death.

She left us many observations and memories, some of them in the following poem.

A SOUL RISING

It's a day for a poem but it's gray

there's a sky full of blue but it's ages away.

There are windswept starry spaces – you can almost touch forever -

and a light that gleams and beckons on the shadowed face of never.

The wide earth rolls unceasing, and the waters and the skies

ever changing, ever moving match the sorrow in men's eyes.

Then a flash of something brilliant in the chaos of the night

comes the tremor of a tumult of unending light.

And the light gleams golden, and the stars stream by,

and the clouds sweep silent through a high clean sky.

Give a man that flash of brilliance though its briefness breaks his heart,

He will perish in pursuit of hope, which falters, fades apart.

And leaves him searching in the shadows for the light that never dies,

leaves him waiting, hoping, yearning for that light to sear his eyes.

While above and far beyond him, where dream and dreamer meet

Sounds the echo of his answer - "man shall never fear defeat,

For as long as he shall follow there is faith to lead him on

And the light shall never falter 'till the last faint hope is gone".

Still the light gleams golden and the stars stream by,

And the vision beckons ever until man shall reach the sky.

Jeannie Sue Michael

The family invites those wishing to make memorial expressions, to make them to the ASPCA in her memory,