I’m Kate Lardner. My real father was David Lardner, a war correspondent for the New Yorker who was killed, and my mother remarried. She married his brother Ring, who had been married before and had two children—Peter and Ann (my two cousins/soon to become stepsiblings). Our brother Jim came later. Ann would have preferred that I call her my sister.

When we got the message that Ann had fallen and was found  barely breathing and taken to John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, we asked the doctor to tell her we loved her and that we knew… I dearly hope she got this message.

For a while Ann taught in the U.S. and before that there were visits to our father in California, Connecticut and New York City which often included us. I like thinking about the overnight campout while living on Granny’s farm. When we lived with my paternal granny in the ‘50s. It took place on the hill above the brook where it leaves Mike Smiersky’s field and enters the woods. Ann was visiting, it was her idea. All my brother Joe remembers about the overnight is where it was and using toilet paper to keep a fire going. The point is Ann was very enterprising in a organized way. He thinks we barely made it through the night and went back later in the morning to clean up. I’m not sure about this, I remember our brother Jim joining us for breakfast.

On this same visit to New Milford, Ann was instrumental—the main force behind—initiating a newspaper utilizing my new printing press. Joe remembers the newspaper vaguely. But he remembers putting butterflies under glass—the wings, with something like a magic marker line for the body. I wish she could have stayed with us longer. That newspaper would have prospered.  She was adventurous and fun.  And a curvaceous babe that summer at Candlewood Lake, a manmade lake located in Fairfield and Litchfield counties of Western Connecticut. Or maybe it was the summer after. We went there to swim when our pond was too cold. She was drawing a lot of attention from the boys at the lake and I proudly watched. 

An earlier time, comes to mind. Back in Santa Monica before the blacklist took hold, before Ring went to jail, before we moved to Mexico City because our dad couldn’t get hired in Hollywood anymore. Peter and Ann were living with us while their mother Silvia was readying their home in Newport Beach. I was about six. Hard to forget this story. The two of them entered my bedroom and inquired which I preferred, hot water or cold. Cold I innocently remarked. They proceeded to dump water on my head. A lousy thing to do but had to hand it to them for considering my preference.

I was older when Ann visited in New York after the family settled there. Our father wrote for television on the blacklist. It was his main source of income during the fifties.

In 1959 the Italian producer Carlo Ponti and his partner, Marcello Gerosi, summoned our father to Hollywood to talk about rewriting a script for Ponti’s wife, Sophia Loren who was about to launch an American career at Paramount. Ponti, like other Europeans, found  the blacklist mystifying. It  was collapsing at this point  but our father was still required to take certain precautions. One was to register in a hotel under a false name so that the producers could speak to him through the Paramount switchboard without “violating security.”  He chose the name Rick, so that if his own name were used by mistake it might pass as a bit of carelessness, and the last name Spencer for no particular reason. When Ann, then a student at Stanford, came to visit and share his quarters,  a decent respect to the opinions of the day required that she should register as Miss Spencer rather than Miss Lardner. I’ve always liked this story. She was up close and personal to mystery and intrigue.

We all three experienced dining out with Ann at Japanese restaurants in New York City. She ordered for us off the menu.  I love and still have the beautiful kimono she gave me.

Ann had opinions. In the early sixties, I was torn between two beaus. There was like a family consideration. Or vote. I don’t remember what the others said but Ann was voting for Michael over John.
I wish we hadn’t lived so far apart.

None of us were in close contact, mainly because of distance. Ann constructed a new  family for herself when she moved to Oxford in 1982. From every indication, a very good one. We’ve learned that she was taking an increasing dim view of her own health. That she was struggling. I wish I’d been able to help her with some of her recent battles. Thank you, Catherine Forsyth in Geneva for alerting Roger Goodman of your concerns and thank you, Roger, for finding her. I’m glad my sister is no longer struggling.  I’m glad that when she was found she seemed at peace. Thank you to her Oxford friends for the care that has been put into the celebration of her life and achievements.