When someone we love is dying, our remaining time with them is precious indeed. In January 2003, Adrian Leon LeBlanc was 85 years old and in the end stage of lung cancer. His daughter, writer Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, regularly drove from her apartment in New York City to visit him in Leominster, Mass. With her father's blessing she started bringing along a tape recorder to document their final months together.
The resulting audio essay, broadcast on National Public Radio on November 13, is a moving portrait of Ms. LeBlanc's deep and abiding relationship with her father. To read about and listen to the essay, click here. Links on the page include an interview with Ms. LeBlanc on how she came to record her father and the feelings it brought up for all involved.
There is a connection between Ms. LeBlanc and ElderLawAnswers. In 2000, she won the Richard J. Margolis Award, an annual prize given to a promising non-fiction writer. The award was created in 1992 to sustain the journalistic vision of Margolis, who was the father of ElderLawAnswers president Harry S. Margolis. ElderLawAnswers' editorial director, Ken Coughlin, was also privileged to have Dick Margolis as an editorial mentor and friend.
After receiving the Margolis Award, Ms. LeBlanc's first book, Random Family, was published, and it helped her win a MacArthur "genius" grant in 2006.
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