SOME OF MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE PERSONS FROM MY OWN LIFE

(1) Meredith McNabb, a female science-beat reporter for "The Minnesota Daily" student newspaper at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Meredith was refreshingly polite and friendly and constructive, and I hope that she is thriving in her post-"Minnesota Daily" life.

(2) Daisy Wong (right name?), a virtuous and heroic female fictional character I enjoyed reading about in the novels of American author Pearl Buck. I was greatly impressed by Daisy's determination to resolve conflicts in mainland China in an honorable and kind manner. I am currently attempting to verify the correct full name of that fictional female protagonist, since it's possible that my current recollection of her name is not fully accurate.

(3) Hubert H. Humphrey, the 1968 Democratic Party candidate for U.S. President. I admired the joyous and generously idealistic and refreshingly optimistic manner in which Vice President Humphrey spoke appreciatively about the potential of American society to become much greater than it was in the late 1960s.

(4) First Lady and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who as the wife and, later, the widow, of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, wrote newspaper columns books that brilliantly conveyed her own marvelously earnest and idealistic and wholesome and polite and kind outlook as a human being and political leader.

(5) Hayley Mills, an English actress whose movies highlighted her as a teenage lady cheerfully responding in a resourceful and wholesome and optimistic manner to each challenge she faced in Great Britain.

(6) Sally Field. That American actress's television role as "The Flying Nun," a wonderfully virtuous Roman Catholic nun with the magical power to fly in the air throughout the U.S. territorial island of Puerto Rico in order to help persons in distress on that island, was very inspirational to me during my youth in Texas.