Jane Greer

How do you thank someone who’s helped make your lifelong dream come true? How do you approach it when you’ve never met them? What do you do when you find out you’ll never be able to thank them the way you'd hoped? Please tell me, what do you do then? 

∞

I wrote a book slated for publication. It’s baseball-driven with some memoir, and it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. All my adult life I talked about it and finally got it done. With a little help from my friends—old and new.

My friend of nearly six decades, Mike Aquilina, read the manuscript and gave me some initial feedback. A week later he told me he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He thought it had potential. Mike should know. He’s written more than 70 books. I was overjoyed.

He offered to help me get it into print. First we needed to find an editor. One editor he knew couldn’t do it. A few months passed before Mike offered to edit it himself. He envisioned some time for editing as he planned for his professional life to slow down. But that’s like saying a Formula One car is navigating the turn rather than screaming down the straightaway. It’s a temporary slowdown. It’s just that the finely tuned machine is not moving as fast as it could until once again it inevitably does. Mike still guides pilgrimages to Sicily and Rome, and he hops around the United States for speaking engagements. He’s got six kids and eight grandkids. Mike’s still a busy dude. 

Mike emailed me one day with great news. A prominent editor offered her services. Mike said she was perfect for the project. She was born in Iowa and lived in both South Dakota and North Dakota. She was far removed not only from where Mike and I grew up but also from how we grew up. In other words, she could look at my manuscript without bias and whip it into shape. 

Mike and his family occupy more than a solid chapter of the book and maybe he was too close to the whole thing. But it wasn’t just that— even if I thought it might be. It was more so that Mike touted Jane Greer as one of the finest literary editors he’d ever worked with. And she was one celebrated poet, too.

The International Poetry Foundation tells us that “her debut collection, Bathsheba on the Third Day (1986), was hand-typeset and hand-printed by the great Harry Duncan, who worked with a number of legendary poets, including International Poetry Forum alumni Tennessee Williams, Allen Tate, Robert Lowell, and Dana Gioia.”

Mike introduced me to Jane in a virtual sense. We sent the manuscript to her, and I sweated it out while she read it. 

I knew Mike liked the work, and he would never bullshit me about its strengths. But I thought perhaps his lifelong friendship with me tinged his objectivity just a little on the book’s weaknesses. Mike’s the first person to cheer on another person while they pursue their dreams. He’s the first guy out of the dugout after you cross home plate. 

In a week or two, Jane got back to me. I saw the email notification pop up on my Garmin watch, but I just let it sit unread for a while. If Jane saw no merit in the manuscript, maybe a year of writing it would be all for naught. I was nervous. 

Here’s how it went in the very first part of our many email exchanges:

Jane: "I like watching baseball well enough but have never been a baseball freak. Nor has my husband or anyone else in my family. But I LOVE YOUR BOOK.”

It was the greatest day of my literary life thus far. Mike, Jane and I— we were off and running.

Jane took about nine months or so to read through it and turned a draft into a book. In the middle of it all, she had some health issues and other projects to complete. Before our first phone conversation, I made notes. The first thing I wanted to do was express my gratitude for her selflessness, her willingness to bring my lifelong wish closer to fruition.

When the final edit came back, the manuscript shrunk from 67,000 words (maybe 225 pages) to 37,000 words (about 130 pages). I was a bit dismayed. Jane said many of my memories were beautiful, but they belonged in another book. The stories diverged too far from the themes she’d uncovered. She reined me in. She kept me on point. 

I’ve learned memoirs are a tough sell. Especially when you’re an unknown commodity— a nobody. Because nobody wants to publish someone’s life story unless you’re a celebrity, and nobody wants to read it unless you have some crazy tale to tell. And my story isn’t crazy enough.

So, I published some of those family remembrances on my website. Much of that stuff is left over from my original manuscript. Jane was elated that I decided to share my very personal thoughts on my blog or whatever it’s called. She knew the stories well and felt them right along with me. To yet again meet with her approval kept me going.

When Jane’s editing job ended, we remained friends in cyberspace. We commented on each other's posts, and we looked forward to the book launch and the time when we could meet in person.

Along with being brilliant and kind, I also found out about Jane’s sense of humor. Here’s a sampling of some hilarious thoughts she posted:

“A new driver license photo is a high-speed rail trip to humility.”

“I don’t think you laugh out loud as much as you claim you do.”

“Today definitely calls for real scotch in the scotcheroos.”

Yeah. She’d had those kinds of days, with more in store.

In July 2025, she encountered more health problems. She asked for prayers, and I obliged daily, sometimes more often than that. She pushed through some tough days and seemed to be on the mend. 

I didn’t want to wait any longer to thank her. And I thought of one way to do it. I’d meet her on her own turf. I’m not a poet but I’d give it a shot. What better way to say thanks. 

At dusk during Jane’s hospital stay I sat on my porch staring at an empty lot across the way. Beyond the field’s edge sits a mighty towering maple, fearing neither the folly of man nor the menace of nature. But nonetheless subject to the law of the creator. The law that says no matter how strong we stand, we still fall. 

There were scatters of lightning bugs above the grass at the foot of the tree. And their pulsations made me think of a heart beating in that hospital far from me in the Great Plains. Like I said, I know little about poetry, but I gave it a go.

Jane 

An earthly wide wonder

God’s glowing winged beasts 

Alight in dim dawn 

Blink brightly by dusk 

O’er a field on the roadside  

They drift scintillant  

A moonglow of jade

Weds gold from a sun 

Far from my reaches 

Her profuse heart hastes  

Distant in distance 

Yet near in one sense 

What of these words 

To one you’ve not met 

An usher of dreams 

A kind of a saint

By light of her virtue 

I offer my thanks 

She said, “Please don’t mind it.

It’s the beauty of fate.”

My soul casts a string  

To reel hers back in  

To the rim of the Badlands

A far-out way west 

That thread of our hope

Unwound strand by strand

By means of a hand

With purposeful ends

One day we shall meet

Magnanimous friend 

‘Neath a tree of such kindness

By the lamp of your grace 

Jane was a woman of profound faith. The kind who feared little in this world because all the while she knew that someone in the other world had her back. She went into the hospital with hope. After a number of difficult days and medical complications from surgeries, Jane passed on. 

I never sent that poem. I thought I’d have more time to refine it until she got home to Bismarck. In the words of the obscure German author Hugo von Trimberg, “God must needs laugh outright, could such a thing be, to see his wondrous Manikins here below.”

I’d only known Jane for two years. She never asked for anything in return for editing my book except a signed copy after publication. I’m not sure how many would give all that time and effort to someone they’ve never met in these days when the material world often grinds the heel of its boot on the face of the spiritual one. I know at least a few people in my life who would do it. And Jane had become one more.

By way of my words, I give my thanks to Jane via her family and friends and colleagues. I believe my words will find her in a divine place opened wide to a soul who made our temporal place a better one—one brightened by her light.