On April 21, the wonderful and dynamic Ann Moore, who is a titan at Time, Inc., will be holding a private invitation-only lunch for certain VIPs who were appreciators of the late Governor of Texas – Ann Richards. At that time a few worthies will talk about what Ann meant in their lives and reminisce and cry a little and laugh a lot.

Click here to see my "Ann Richards Photo Album"

Ann’s daughters, Cecile and Ellen, will be with us for this get-together where we’ll also try to raise a bit of dough for Ann’s lasting creation – the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, which operates out of 2206 Prather Lane, Austin, Texas, 78704. (If you wanted to send a donation, nothing would please the spirit of Ann Richards more. And you can get the school newsletter at www.annrichardsschool.org.)

Thinking on things Ann, as I always am, I wanted to share something she wrote to me in March 2004. It is eerily prescient:

“Liz, I do not think you have to be concerned about Bush becoming a great president in history. My present greatest fear is that we are headed toward a serious financial depression worse than anything since the 30s. I know enough about markets and the economy just to be dangerous, and I see no light at the end of this tunnel. We cannot invade and rebuild Iraq, restore Afghanistan, control Korea, clean up Iran, etc. all on our own. We cannot offend all the world to the point where they don’t eat our Fritos or drive our John Deeres, and it looks to me as if that is where we are headed. I believe that we are about to bring the Labor Party to its knees in Great Britain, and Tony Blair may be in such a crack that he will be forced out by his own party. So far, we look like a bunch of inept nincompoops at the UN, with the inability to muster a paltry majority on the Security Council. Well, enough of that – too depressing.

“I worry about you, Liz. Are you still refusing to exercise, drinking those martinis at night and white wine at lunch and eating only from the brown and white food groups? LOVE, Ann.”

In spite of her depressing financial prediction, before her surprising and untimely death Ann rallied in spirit and did the usual things that endeared her to everyone she met. She had a Tom DeLay doll made into a piñata and gave it personally to her friend George Clooney … she encouraged her significant other, the writer Bud Shrake, to finish up his collected works and now, though Ann is gone, his Land of the Permanent Wave: An Edwin ‘Bud’ Shrake Reader is in the bookstores from The University of Texas Press. Ann would be so proud.

Bud wrote me the other day: “I have always coped because I pretended Ann was off on a trip to India or somewhere. The day after she died, I had delivered to my door a box of grapefruit she’d bought for me. But now, I am beginning to realize that maybe she isn’t coming back.”

Bud, it’s not quite the same thing, but Ann is with us in spirit. She can never die. Even as we speak, her school gathers momentum.

The artist Peter Rogers is doing a portrait of Ann from photographs. (It will be superior to the painting hanging in the State Capitol in Austin with all those criminals and bums who have come before and after Ann as governors.)

And the Emmy-winning actress Holland Taylor is perfecting her one-woman play about Ann to tour the nation with it.

Note: Don’t forget to read my nationally syndicated column!!