I miss my mother every day. She was a truly marvelous person. I wrote this song–“The First One”–shortly after she died eighteen years ago. Loretta Dolby was bright, creative, caring, gracious, loving, musical, patient, hard-working, always fair, insightful, nearly always smiling, and above all warmly and intensely engaged with everyone around her. At age sixteen, she lost her own mother and took over the role of mother to her toddler age sister, helped her father and brothers on the farm, and set aside her own plans for college for a while until she could work, borrow, and scrimp her way through Manchester College. She became a teacher and taught fourth graders for many years. She married and had five children. I was the fourth. My life has been immensely blessed by having her as my mother and guiding light.