When we first moved to San Luis Obispo, we were somewhat intimidated by our next door neighbor Liz who seemed to keep to herself. One day our dog Charlie had an accident in her flower bed. My husband Doug tied a note of apology to his collar and took him to Liz' house. She invited us in with a big smile and offered Charlie a treat. Needless to say, Liz won his heart. He frequently went next door to visit her and became all excited when he saw her taking a stroll with her German shepherd Buck. Liz frequently invited us over for her Friday night Happy Hour with friends. We enjoyed many delightful breakfasts and dinners in her beautiful backyard. When we were expecting our first daughter, Liz threw me a surprise baby shower. We shared stories and laughter. I marveled over her vast collection of books, her antique piano, her colorful garden. I truly enjoyed her friendship despite the difference in our age. The more I got to know Liz, the more I admired her kindness, her honesty, her loyalty and generosity. Liz also had good taste. She knows the art of putting things together in a way that is exquisitely pleasing to the senses. Liz has taught me so much. She will always hold a special place in my heat,

I too was in the European Field Office [EFO] for the Applied Physics Lab [APL] and worked with Liz.  I won’t be as able as Bill Mentzer to write so eloquently about Liz, but I share all of his sentiments about Liz.  I especially identify with his comment about her having to take these bewildered young engineers from APL and help them settle into a new work environment [half civilian; half military] and a new country.  I sort of think that with her stratospheric intellect [I believe she was valedictorian of her college class] she looked at us with a sort of bemused interest.  I think that had it not been for her being a wife and mother with a business to run on the side, she could have run all of EFO better than any of us engineers from APL. 

 

I also think another thing that amused Liz was all the paperwork and bureaucracy associated with the Military.  She mastered all that paperwork and kept us all out of the brig.  [She even handled the occasional traffic ticket with the company car.]   I could sense that she was bored with all this office routine, and I thought it would be good to give her a challenge and a chance to use all the Military regulations against themselves.

 

All of us at EFO worked for the Military and had security clearances, etc. and we had official badges [thanks to Liz] that let us into the Military compound there in Heidelberg.  However, we had to park our personal cars and even the Office Car outside the compound and walk a little distance to the office.  A lot of the people working the compound had to do the same thing, but with our office car it was a little hassle when some business errand or trip came up on short notice to have to take the time to go through security on foot and find the company car which was parked randomly each day.  I got with Liz and said, “You know it’s just a matter of paperwork to get us a parking spot for the company car inside the compound”.  I told her we could find the necessary Military officer and compose all the “verbage” for rationale so she could sweet talk him into signing the permission paperwork.  It kept her entertained for about a month; we got our parking place.

 

The next challenge was “Commissary Privileges “.  For years we had been trying to get those privileges for the APL personnel and all the PAGE Communications [at that time] Data Technicians working with the Pershing Missile System.  We were all civilians but we enjoyed some of the privileges of the military people in Germany.  However, all of us civilians were “living on the economy” and had to buy all our food in the local German stores.  In some cases you would want to do that, but the food was less expensive in the Commissary and there were certain US products that you could just not find on the economy.  [I specifically recall for one Thanksgiving paying top Dollar (Mark) for an imported Turkey from Rockingham County, Virginia] [Liz, “it’s only a matter of paperwork - - -“]  It took her more than a month to crack this one, but we all ended up with Commissary Privileges.

 

Liz loved her Germany as a lot of us learned to, and I was surprised she moved back to the States.  She was just a tremendous person, and my wife and my two girls remember her fondly and are ever grateful for all she did for our family.

Liz and I were co-workers first and friends always.  We  started working together when my family and I moved to Heidelberg, West Germany in 1974 to lead the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) European Field Office (EFO) for the Pershing missile program at the Headquarters of the US Army Europe.  Liz was the Administrative Assistant for the supervisors of the EFO.  I was the fifth of the eight EFO supervisors for whom Liz provided continuity and excellent assistance. 

She gave support to the new and often bewildered families of the newly-arrived supervisors, made the office function effectively, kept accurate financial records so that the accountants in the US were satisfied, managed security operations so that we always passed security inspections, and negotiated with German contractors for office support services, making use of her fluent German.  While doing all of this, she also helped Karlheinz run their Schreibwarren Geschäft, (an office supply/gift shop/newstand) located near our office.

Liz was amazing -  a pleasure to work with.  She always took pride in keeping things organized, and getting tasks done correctly and on time.  Liz was a very fast and accurate typist (we worked together in the days before PCs, when I would write out a memo/report for her to type), and she also read for content as she typed.  She would occasionally come to me and say that something I had drafted wasn’t making sense.  She was right, and I would then make the needed revision to the text.  She was a valued editor as well as an outstanding administrative assistant.

Ellen and I remember fondly our visits with Liz, Karlheinz, and John during our time in Heidelberg..  Our children were about the same age as Liz’s son John and they had fun playing together.  We even got to see Karlheinz’s fancy Märklin HO model train project, a hobby he really enjoyed.

We kept in touch regularly with Liz after we moved back to the US in 1977, exchanging stories of family and Pershing program people with whom we both worked .  Ellen and I were able to visit Liz at the Koffee Klatsch shop in the arcade near the Mission in San Luis Obispo and were able to attend her wedding to Bob.  The first news of her cancer was very disheartening.  We are now so sorry to lose our treasured friend.  

Bill and Ellen Mentzer

Silver Spring, MD