About This Site

Kate’s writings are presented in two major parts. The first contains letters of general interest; a draft memoir and essays describing her first years living in Belize, British Honduras; and other descriptions of incidents in her life. I’ve organized this material into chapters that I present in roughly chronological order to tell Kate’s life story in her own words. The second part consists of Kate’s reports of her various trips, mostly vacations but some including business as well; again, the reports are ordered chronologically.

If some of Kate’s descriptions are not historically accurate, they are true reflections (perhaps embellished for literary effect) of how she experienced places and events or how she remembered them years later. Her draft memoir includes the following note:

This is an account of an untraveled Midwestern young woman’s moving with her family to an obscure little Central American country, the British Crown Colony of British Honduras, in the 1950’s. It mirrors an unfamiliar world through her eyes. It is not a sociological study of life in British Honduras at that time.

I have maintained Kate’s usage and spelling and have modified her original text only where necessary for clarity or to remove redundancy when combining related material from different sources. I have not “corrected” descriptions that differ from my own memories. My occasional comments on her narrative or her wording can be found in separate editor’s notes.

If you have comments, I’d be delighted to hear from you. If you’re interested, you can read more about the source material that I worked with.