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vegetarian she described as being “into weeds and seeds.”
    After a trip to Los Angeles to visit a sorority sister from Bradley, she became enthralled with the idea of California. Suddenly, she seemed to know exactly what she wanted—and it lay beside the Pacific. She sent out applications and was accepted as a speech pathologist in the Santa Monica schools.
    She needed time to think, she told John, and although he never understood exactly what she needed to think about, he drove her to California to allow her the opportunity.
    Friends thought that in moving to California and fleeing commitment with John, Janie might be fleeing her mother as well. Delores was upset about the move. Her son was in South Carolina, her daughter in California, and she was left in a big house in Kentucky with only her dogs and a husband she detested.
    Janie settled into an apartment only a few blocks from the beach in Santa Monica and wrote to friends that her life was more free and open than it ever had been—and she was loving every minute of it.
    Romance blossomed anew for Janie in California, again with a lawyer, but that relationship, like the others before it, would pass without commitment.
    By 1977 she was again enrolled in school, this time in Santa Monica College, taking courses that would allow her to enter dental school. In her work as a speech pathologist, she had encountered a doctor who corrected speech problems with dental changes, and he had inspired her to seek her own degree in dentistry. Delores was quick to seize on her daughter’s new ambition. She checked out the University of Louisville’s School of Dentistry and began pitching it to Janie. She could live at home, Delores pointed out, and her father would foot the bills.
    So it was that four years after she left for California, fleeing commitment, Janie returned to Kentucky, fleeing not only another romantic involvement but her one fling at freedom from her mother.
    In the fall of 1980, Janie was back in school in a class that was only one-fourth female and far younger than she. If her age concerned her, she never showed it. Anyway, she looked so much younger than her years—by at least a decade—that few of her classmates ever realized she was their oldest member.
    By her second year, Janie’s grades were at the top of the class, and, as usual, she was finding no shortage of attentive males. Her beauty was intact: her slim, shapely figure; her long, auburn curls; her dark, expressive eyes; and her quick, engaging smile still had their effect. She restricted her dating to classmates, and although she dated many and forged strong friendships with several others, she didn’t dabble with serious romance again until her final year at school.
    Her father’s death in November 1983 was the catalyst for that. Janie was in her apartment when her mother called to tell her about it. She went looking for Ron King, her closest friend at the school, but he wasn’t in his room. Her search took her to Phil Pandolfi’s dorm room.
    Phil was surprised to see her. He was a first-year student, and he had met Janie on his first day at school. He had been seeking advice from Ron King when Janie came in and gave him a big smile. “Who’s this, Ron?” she’d asked. “He’s kinda cute.”
    Phil paid little attention to her remark, but later he realized that Janie was always flashing smiles at him, that she made a point to say hello, to stop him to chat about classes and how he was doing. He knew flirting when he saw it, but because she was a final-year student, he had been reluctant to respond.
    On the night she came to his room, he invited her in and offered something to drink before he realized she was upset and hadn’t come to visit.
    “Have you seen Ron?” she asked.
    “No, is something wrong?”
    “My father died,” she said, and broke into tears.
    “I’m sorry,” Phil said, moving to comfort her.
    “He was an alcoholic,” she whispered as he put an arm around her