Cleo Eulau deserves more recognition

Though I appreciated the depth and length of your article on Heinz Eulau in Stanford Report (Jan. 28), I was saddened not only by the additional information that his wife, Cleo Eulau, had passed away five days later but also by the fact that you credited her life with only two sentences.

Though Cleo's position as an adjunct professor may not be as prestigious in the Stanford community, her special warmth and kindness touched many, including myself. She was a welcoming face when I started a new job as an administrative secretary for the Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic at Children's Hospital at Stanford (now Packard) in the early 1980s. Knowing I was a poet, she gifted me with a volume of Emily Dickinson's work, showing encouragement for a beginning writer who was questioning many aspects of life at that time. She was also well respected and loved by her colleagues and the numerous social work interns under her tutelage.

When I think of Cleo, I think of an educated, intelligent woman who received pleasure out of helping others, whose eyes laughed and cheered others or showed sorrow and gave comfort. As Dickinson wrote, "Death sets a thing significant / The eye had hurried by." Let's not hurry by Cleo Eulau so quickly, please.

Janice Dabney
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center