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We received this early in January from Kitty in Denver, she wrote to us just as the new Ella Fitzgerald Postage stamp was released:
I wanted to tell you a story about how I met Ella Fitzgerald. She was staying at the Denver Marriott around 1974 while I was employed there as a housekeeper. When I knocked on her door to clean her room, she invited me in, but wouldn't let me clean. Instead, she invited me to sit down and watch General Hospital with her, and she offered me Coke and chips, although she said she wasn't supposed to be having any. The phone rang and before she answered it, she asked me to turn on my vacuum cleaner, which I did. It was very loud. Then she answered the phone and said loudly into the receiver: "I can't hear you, the maid is here cleaning!" When she hung up the phone, I laughed so hard 'cause she told me it was her manager on the phone!
I was just fresh out of high school at the time and had just quit college after my first year, and I was depressed because I didn't know where I was going in life, plus I was living one thousand miles away from my mother. Ella assured me that everything would be okay, and she asked me to stay until the end of the TV program. I did get in trouble at the end of my shift for not having finished cleaning the rest of the rooms on my list, but I had a new sense of hope. I didn't know much about Ella Fitzgerald, only that my mother loved her music and listened to it often. Since then, my life has been blessed with two beautiful daughters with whom I shared this story after Ella's death in 1996. I'm excited about the new Ella Fitzgerald stamp and I will always remember her smile and hospitality.
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