The Francises had never made any secret that Mary had played an important part; she was the one who did all the background research: for Flying Finish (1966), she learned to fly, produced a book about flying, then started an air taxi service which she ran for seven years. She learned to paint for In the Frame (1976) and became such an accomplished photographer for Reflex (1980) that she was asked to take a picture of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother for a book's dust-jacket.That's amazing. She deserves a decent biography of her own.
To my surprise I received a letter from Dick not but a few weeks later, kindly praising a few strong points in my book and thanking me again. I wrote him back and thus ensued a correspondence between us. When my second book, “Hoofprints” was published, it contained a dedication to Dick Francis, as the author who had inspired me.The man was a mensch.
Dick wrote that he liked Hoofprints better than Cutter, and that I was improving as an writer. He was unfailingly cheerful and upbeat in his letters, even when he wrote about the hurricane that battered his home on Grand Cayman, and his wife’s illness. He sent me a Christmas card every year, signed, “love, Dick Francis”, and for many, many years he sent me signed copies of his novels when they came out. He was always polite, always gracious, always supportive, and he never failed to answer a letter. I believe that he had many, many correspondences very like the one he had with me, and from what I’ve been told, he made time for all of them. What a gracious person he was, with such a busy life, so much fame, and yet the ability to take time for the many fans who wrote.
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posted by bjgeiger at 3:29 PM on February 14, 2010