ELIZABETH DEES GATTI
January 31, 1970 – March 9, 2009

Your courageous spirit and loving grace
touched all those  who knew you.

You will live in our hearts forever.

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Over the course of the last 42 years, Anne and I have had some pretty serendipitous times involving food and drink. As a young newlywed couple in 1969, we got lost toodling around and stumbled upon a tiny, remote village in Germany’s Black Forest. We later discovered we were the first outsiders to visit the [...]

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A couple of weeks ago, I ran into a neighbor of mine at the grocery store. When I asked her how things were going, she replied, “It’s cold on the creek.”  Compared to recent winters, I guess that’s a fairly accurate statement. My brother Michael, who lives in Galax, arrived in this area in 1988. [...]

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We’ve been in Columbia, MD for the last week or so making arrangements for the care of Anne’s ailing mother. It doesn’t take long to remember why we moved to Wythe County in the first place. The DC metropolitan area is maddening enough to make a Baptist preacher take up drinkin’ and cussin’. Thank goodness [...]

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I don’t know about you, but I’ve been as entertained by winter as I care to be. I’m thinking of changing Chestnut Ridge’s name to Par Mountain because right now, dern near everything around here is below par.

Our humble little cottage is semi-ice bound because I didn’t get the snow guards installed on our nifty [...]

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I’d like to thank all the people Anne and I have heard from in the past ten months for their love and support. Considering everything we’ve been through, to say that this has been an awful year gives new meaning to the word “understatement”. We will never get over the loss of our beloved Beth. [...]

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I’m pretty sure Anne didn’t set out to string the lights on the fir tree in the front yard to resemble a maniacal horror movie killer-clown, I figure she just got lucky. It seems that no one has any chili pepper lights this year, and we need more than the five strands we have. So [...]

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The tough put on wool socks and long johns underneath their jammies. Man oh man has the weather been rough here on the Creek lately. The days have alternated between sunny and cold, overcast and cold, and windy and cold. The nights have just been freezing cold… colder than a witch’s breaststisties. But hey, it’s [...]

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