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Sarah Foster died in Austin, Texas on Wednesday, July 31, 2024 from Alzheimer's. Sarah was one of the best known and well-liked members of our class. She went to UT and lived in Austin (as did many of her closest RHS friends) ever since. Sarah's husband Kevin and son Matt will miss her most but those lifelong friends she had will be close behind.
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Tommy Thomas
Sarah stood out in her class. Not just because of her long legs or extremely long beautiful straight hair that fell to her waist. No, she stood out because of her smile, vibrancy, and confidence. I was so pleased when the photo above was included in the front of the RHS Class of 1969 Annual. There is Sarah deeply engaged in serious and sincere conversation while I am desperately trying to get her attention by showing her how I was practicing to be a sword swallower but using my safer slide rule.
Sarah moved to Austin to go to UT in 1969 along with a lot of other RHS Class of 1969 graduates. I remember that she took a long road trip with her close friend Sandra Abbot during our college years. And then Sarah met and married Kevin Bice.
In recent years, I would waik daily around the Town Lake Trail here in Austin. Occassionally, as I walked counterclockwise from the Mopac Bridge and acroos the Lamar Street Pedestrian Bridge to loop back to Mopac, I would run into (not literally) Sarah who would be taking that same loop clockwise. One of us would reverse our path and then walk together for 15 or 20 minutes talking about life, love, and just whatever came into the conversation. That's Austin -- you somehow casually bump into lifelong friends on a downtown nature trail among two million other peoplle.
In the last 10 years or so, each year Sarah and Kevin held a Christmas Party on December 23 inviting friends and neightbors and business acquaintenances. December 23 was a liminal day -- too late for most people to have a pre-Christmas Party and too early for Christmas and Christmas Eve so the gathering was well attended partly due to its timing. But the primary reason was that Sarah and Kevin's mid-century home overlooking Zilker Park and the Zilker Christmas tree oozed comfort, friendliness, and love.
I started to miss Sarah as her Alzheimer's progressed. Alzheimer's is a thief slowly stealing away the personality of the one so afflicted. At one of the last times I saw Sarah when words were more and more slipping from her tongue, she didn't say anything but, when she saw me, her eyes lit up and she smiled. Then she hugged me, stepped back, and, with an increasingly sad face, hugged me again. Sarah had returned for a brief moment only to retreat once again.
There was so much more that made Sarah a stand out in our class but that's it for me for now. What a woman and friend I had in Sarah.