Victoria "Vicky" Weeks was my friend at Fair Oaks Elementary School, in Highland Springs, Virginia. She was one of my first best friends in school. She was sweet & fun & hospitable...and she was the first friend I lost.

Possible memorial - link1 link2

I remember Vicky, on the north side of the school, nearest Willis’ brick house, waving leaf-covered branches like palms. We were pretending like it was a parade for Palm Sunday. We were praising God.

It was so exciting to get to go to Vicky’s house. Her house was more like a tiny farm. The farmhouse was two stories; if my memory serves me correctly, she lived out Meadow Road, on the south side of the road.

She had different experiences than I did. So first of all, we played outside with her chickens. I kept a feather. Afterward, we went upstairs to her bedroom. She had a lot of pink and yellow yarn, and the two of us made yarn octopi. Mine was tighter and smaller; hers was longer and looser. I always meant to keep my octopus. I'm not sure where it is, but I still feel like I have it in a box of my toys and childhood momentos, in my basement.

One time, Vicky came over our house after school, and my younger sister, Shari, Vicky and I played Barbies on the carport. This involved spreading out my Barbie house, my sister's yacht, and her camper, and playing with our dolls. We may or may not have done it that time, but playtime often involved putting water in the holes of the concrete, and letting the dolls "swim." [Pictured above, Karen (left), Shari (right) in front of Fair Oaks Elementary School, September 2023]

Later, when Mrs. Weeks and Vicky’s sister Cathy (Catherine) arrived to pick Vicky up, Cathy was in awe.

“I didn't know your daddy was a policeman!”

“He's not a policeman, why don't you think that?” I laughed. My grandfather was a deputy sheriff in Louisiana, but that was different.

“Because he's got a police car.” Dad's white company car probably looked a bit like a police car, with its writing on the side of the car. Cathy probably wasn't old enough to read; otherwise, she would have known that it said “Loyall Rid-O-Pest” and featured a 18-inch dead cockroach. Our family laughed and laughed about that.

Vicky gave me a gift…a Disney toothbrush. I believe it was yellow. I'm not sure what character was on it, but I keep on thinking it was Mary Poppins. She might have given it to me for my birthday, that November. But it could have been for some other reason.

In another memory, there was some type of disagreement among me and 3 friends; I believe Vicky and Paige were 2 of them, but I'm pretty sure there was at least one other friend...maybe Ruth? I think the friends wanted to pair up (maybe something like, who was the best friend). Maybe Vicky felt to me like my best friend, but one of the other girls wanted her to be their best friend? For some reason, it stressed me out. So I went running, pell mell, to the east side of the property, across the meadow, close to the woods. I probably was crying. At any rate, I was very distraught about the disagreement. But the other girls came running behind me, seeing how upset I was, and everybody agreed that they wouldn't fight anymore. The scene ended up with us hugging.

My next memory was that I was going to Rodessa, Louisiana and Lubbock, Texas, for Christmas. I was already 7 years old, because I had just had my birthday. I thought it was very coincidental that, at the same time I was going there, Vicky was going to Oklahoma to see her family members, including her grandma. If I remember correctly, Vicky's mother was native American, which at that point, we would have called "Indian."

When we got back, basically just after New Years, she gave me a black and white photo of herself, riding a pony named "Chunckett." I put the photo into a yard-sale find, a pink plastic frame, the kind with the small easel, that you would put on the top of your chest of drawers or dressing table. The photo was too big for the frame, so I folded the right and left edges to fit.

On Wednesday, January 15, Vicky went to Girl Scouts…or Brownies, to be more specific. I believe that our friend Paige was in the same troop. She mentioned they had a bonfire that night, with roasted marshmallows; she said that was the last thing that Vicky would have eaten. When the meeting was over, Vicky's mom picked her up.

At the corner of Williamsburg Road and Airport Drive in Sandston, there was an accident. I was told that Vicky may not have her seatbelt on, and she was thrown from the vehicle. Her sister Catherine broke her leg. (Virginia didn't enact seat belt laws until 1988, more than a decade later. Link At any rate, that law was only for the front seat, and Vicky may or may not have been in the front seat.)

On Thursday, January 16, I was called to speak to the principal. Mr. Paul Wenger explained to me that Vicky had died. I don't know how I responded, but I have a feeling that I responded as if it were an event, not as if it were a condition, an experience I would never fully get over. I could be wrong, but I doubt I ever spoke to him about it again or ever asked anybody for any help with my feelings.

I don't know how Daddy and Mama figured out what to do next. But they took me down to Medical College of Virginia (or MCV, now VCU Health), where we visited Cathy, recuperating from her broken leg. As far as I know, that's the only time I ever went to MCV until I was an adult, working as a temp for gynecology surgery the month I got married. We took Cathy a couple of toys to play with in the hospital. But after that visit, as far as I remember, I never saw Cathy nor her family again.

There was no funeral. Or, as an adult, I realize that that might have been only what I was told--at any rate, I did not go to one. At the time, I was told Vicky was cremated because she was Native American, and that's the way they did things. But then again, that was just what I was told. (As an adult, I wondered whether she was cremated so her parents could take her ashes with them to another location. I could be wrong, but for some reason I had the idea that her distraught parents had decided to move away from Virginia, back to Oklahoma and family.)

For me, it wasn't the end. Throughout elementary, I had a repeated dream of looking for Vicky. Without any sense of closure (although naturally, I didn't know that word at the time), my subconscious perpetually searched for her. In one of my dreams, I found her--she was coming out of the last bathroom stall, in the ladies restroom next to the nursery at Fellowship Baptist in Varina. After 4th grade I left Fair Oaks, and after 5th, I left Fellowship; perhaps time elapsing, not frequenting places I'd been with Vicky, or both, finally ended the nightmares.

As an adult, I wrote a song about Vicky...partly about her, and partly about grief. At that point, just mentioning her name made me tearful. But through the writing of the song and performing it a couple times, I finally worked through the harshest grief and can now remember Vicky with a smile. My kids made it to high school and college before losing friends. I hope we've done the right things with them, to help them grieve more effectively than I did, losing a childhood friend.

In 2017, I reconnected with Paige. I asked her about Vicky, and she said, "I know, I just thought about her, like it was yesterday." It was amazing to run into Paige, doing her job for our local school system [Paige, left; Karen, right] 

In 2023, I searched in Google for Vicky's real first name, Victoria, last name, the date she died, and Oklahoma. I was startled to find a grave that matched all of my memories. Now, there's no way for me to know for sure that this is the one, in Baptist Mission Cemetery. (But if not, it is an amazing coincidence.)

So Vicky's family, if for some reason you ever come upon this memorial, please know that she isn't forgotten. Far from it. It's all just like it was yesterday. We send our love to you.