It is impossible to remember Missy without laughter or to remember her face without a smile. So many things set her apart from all of us and yet her goodness never pushed us away.

Missy never worried for long. She was too busy delighting herself with the simple things that life has to offer. She was truly carefree. She never let anything bring her down.

When I think of Missy I remember sitting in class and having a teacher pass out a new assignment. All of us would be groaning and moaning about all the stress that was coming up and talking about all we had to do. But we'd look over at Missy and she would have the paper up by her nose, sniffing it, saying, "Umm. This paper smells so good. It is straight from the copier. Smell it!"

Once in Mexico we were working in the hot sun on a roof and we were all cranky of course except for Missy. We sat down to take a break, sitting there for about thirty minutes. All of a sudden, we heard Missy exclaim from behind us, "Look!" And we turned around to see Missy holding a basket in which she had arranged our snack - a half pound bag of M&M's - by color! It had taken her half an hour but she was so proud of it she made me take a picture of her with the M&M's.

It was things like that that guaranteed a laugh whenever Missy was around. She was childlike in that life never ceased to hold wonder and enjoyment for her.

Missy was very unselfish. She always thought of others before herself. I remember my sixteenth birthday when Missy planned a luncheon party for me at Chevy's. She made sure that everything would go well and that I would have the best time. Although I didn't know it and Missy never showed it during the whole lunch, Missy knew she was going to get in trouble for being late to her next class. And get in trouble she did. The next period I was walking through the office and saw that Missy was crying . Instead of telling me how upset she was, she smiled and asked, "Did you have a good birthday, Shana?" She didn't tell me she had been sent to the office for an infraction. She never stopped caring about other people.

Missy's glass was always half full. When her work was hard, when things went wrong, and when people drove her crazy, first, she would laugh, and then she would find something good to say about the situation. This made her a dauntless and diligent person. She was never afraid of hard work or trying something new because she always knew she could find something good to love about every situation. She was a regular Pollyanna.