Ginny: A Love Remembered

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The 50-year marriage of editorial cartoonist Artley and his wife Ginny began as a WW II romance between a WAC and a soldier. It ended early this year with the death of Ginny, mother of their four children, of Alzheimer's disease and is honored here in an unabashedly sentimental and at times overly detailed fashion. The ``horrible nightmare'' of Ginny's illness, including her mental deterioration, starkly contrasts with the joy of earlier years spent on the Iowa family farm and in the couple's long partnership as editors of a small-town weekly. In 1987, after five years of devoted home care, Ginny's worsening condition required more intensive attention and she was moved to the Iowa Veterans Home where she stayed until shorty before her death in a hospice. Although oral communcation had long ceased, Artley is convinced that Ginny recognized and welcomed his presence until the end. Photos. (Sept.)

William Beatty

Budding cartoonist Bob Artley met Ginny Moore in 1943, when they were med techs in the army and the WAAC, respectively. The first three-quarters of this moving book tells about their developing love and growing family. Family letters and excerpts from Ginny's journal add to the heartwarming story. Bob worked as a cartoonist for the "Des Moines Tribune" and then, after a distasteful interlude with an advertising agency, in the art department of a publishing company. Ginny served as a Cub Scout den mother, with the Bluebirds, and in similar activities. They eventually owned and published small-town papers in Iowa and Minnesota for almost three decades. In 1978 hints of problems began to appear, and in 1982 Ginny was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Bob describes the disease's "dark valley of prolonged dying" step-by-step, observing near the end that it might not have been so bad had it all happened at once. "Ginny" will leave most readers both thankful and heartbroken.