Early life

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour,
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come   
Dancing to a frenzied drum   
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty, and yet not   
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,   
Or hers before a looking-glass; for such,   
Being made beautiful overmuch,   
Consider beauty a sufficient end,   
Lose natural kindness, and maybe   
The heart-revealing intimacy   
That chooses right, and never find a friend.
...
In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;   
Hearts are not had as a gift, but hearts are earned   
By those that are not entirely beautiful.   
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty's very self, has charm made wise;   
And many a poor man that has roved,   
Loved and thought himself beloved,   
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree,   
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,   
And have no business but dispensing round   
Their magnanimities of sound;   
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,   
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.   
Oh, may she live like some green laurel   
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.
...
And may her bridegroom bring her to a house   
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;   
For arrogance and hatred are the wares   
Peddled in the thoroughfares.   
How but in custom and in ceremony   
Are innocence and beauty born?   
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,   
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.
— A Prayer for My Daughter, WB Yeats

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rebecca Lynn Love was born in Wichita to Robert Douglas Love and Lillian Pauline "Thiessen" Love, both now deceased. Randy and Bob Love, both still alive, were her older brothers. Outside of home and neighborhood, one of the first "places" in the world that she inhabited for a time durng nearly every summer until her death was Lake Vermilion in the Minnesota boundary waters. It was there she learned to love people and creatures alike as she walked trails among the ferns and birches or swam in the northern waters' waves where everything — from enduring trees to perishing mayflies — shared a common life in Nature's rich diversity. Wakemup Narrows, Norwegian Bay, Ludlow's Island, and RanRoBe Rock were interwoven as living names in the tapestry of her young soul.

After 5 years at home with her mom, she began her formal schooling at what was to become Wichita Collegiate School from which she eventually graduated. During her early years she was a notable swimmer eventually competing in the Olympic Trials as a young teenager in which she finished 3rd in her event just missing the Olympic team.

After ending high school and her AAU swimming career, she enrolled at the University of the South in Sewanee TN where she studied English Literature, got her BA and met Philip Dalton Elder from Chattanooga TN. After Sewanee, she travelled abroad briefly with her oldest brother, Randy, who was studying at Keeble College Oxford. Upon her return to the states, she attended and graduated from a paralegal training program in Philadelphia in anticipation of a career "laying down the law" — something she did with charm all her life.

However, just as she was beginning her career, Phil Elder came to his senses [after a rugby game collision?] somewhere in Australia, flew back to America and promptly proposed marriage to Becky who accepted and they began a family life in 1977 that lasted 48 years.