My other sister Margaret calls me Brenda, and you know what? I don't mind a bit.

While She Said/She Said is usually the exclusive reserve of the Roach Sisters, we also welcome the call-and-response from our readers. Mostly this comes in the form of comments, though this week our friend Margaret Lowrie Robertson sent this, reporting that she is “grateful to Margaret for allowing the “other” Margaret to borrow her space to provide the flip side of Marion’s post about me last week.”

So now let me tell you about Marion Roach Smith, as seen through the eyes of my 21-year-old self: she is Brenda Starr, the brainy, glamorous redheaded Girl Reporter come to life.  All she needs is the exotic Basil St John with his black orchid serum to complete the picture.

I am awkwardly new in the newsroom, and marvel at this glorious golden creature, shuttling seamlessly the strata that separates copyboys from reporters and editors.  Yet from the moment of our first meeting on the newsroom floor, I know she is already a friend.

And because this is Marion, it is an unconditional friendship, like an “access all areas” backstage pass.  She is full of laughter and light, a rare and beautiful force of nature, juggling impossible elements – inhospitable working hours and the drive to achieve reporter status, a demanding social life with a vast array of friends, boyfriends, colleagues, admirers… and then, at home, a beloved mother slowly slipping away from the world.  Marion will eventually chronicle it, first in the Times Sunday Magazine and, later, in a milestone, best-selling book.  I wept when I read it, to realize what my golden friend and her sister Margaret had been through, because until then, I realized, I’d never really understood.

Something else struck me: while the rest of us were still trying to figure out how to make our mark, Marion already was writing in sky-high letters.

In those days, we are part of a charmed circle—among the last of the New York Times copyboys – along with our friends Suzanne, Mary and Marianne.  We each bring something different to this moveable feast and although we are all vying for the same prizes – a byline, a news clerkship, any recognition of the legwork/writing/reporting we are all already doing – there is, surprisingly, little sense of competition. Just a fundamental feeling we are all friends on this privileged journey together.

Here is one of my favorite memories of Marion from those days: we are dressed to the nines, in the heels and lipstick she has already told you about, shivering outside Studio 54 with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other young hopefuls, trying to catch the eye of the burly bouncer blocking entry to the fabled disco kingdom.  Before long, his practiced eye falls on Marion.  He does a visible double take, beckons her out of the line, unclips the velvet rope and stands back.  She grabs my hand to take me with her.  One triumphant moment later, we sweep inside, where Marion once again proves an instant magnet, this time for young, expensive men proffering champagne.

We drink and dance and drink and dance.  Oh, we are happy!  We are young!  We are in Studio 54!  New York is ours — the world is ours– that night. More than thirty years later, I no longer remember where reality and memory collide and blur.  I just know this is the kind of memory everyone should have.

Life’s currents ultimately take us on our different adventures, in different directions. She is a well-known writer and broadcaster by the time we connect again. More than 25 years have passed since we last met, but our friendship is easily resumed, as if never interrupted, first by email, then in person.   The years – life– have only added to her radiance and the things she juggles are different now. But as you, her readers and friends will know, her passion, her generosity of spirit, are not.

I am lucky.  Marion is one of several women in my life with whom I bonded early on.  The others… well, you know who you are.  We may not see each other for ten, twenty, thirty years. But the bonds forged when we were young and the world was wide open, are only informed and enriched by our experiences.  Because we now know that true friendship is not a fleeting coincidence of youth but a tie remaining undimmed by decades and distance.

Marion is still Brenda Starr to me but other, more important things help define us.  We were always sisters; now we are wives and mothers as well.  She has found her Basil St John—the dashing newspaper editor Rex Smith – and her beautiful daughter Grace, for whom she literally went to the ends of the earth.  Our universes have expanded, exploded, new galaxies have formed, but our home lives are now the axis upon which our worlds spin.

We are, finally, who we are.

And yes, we are still friends.

We may not be front and center stage in each others’ every day lives, but we don’t need to be – because even when we are occupied  elsewhere with our own productions, we are nonetheless still there – sometimes applauding in the audience, sometimes backstage with a helpful whisper.  Sometimes just there.

But always – ALWAYS– there.

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