Katie Hess

Katie Hess

Katie was an Irish Setter with a human heart and the ability to understand almost empathically, human emotion.

I can’t recall when I first met her. She was part of the Hess family of Poquott, New York. Brad and Kevin Hess were good friends.

Kevin introduced me to the Who. I was sitting down on the beach under an inverted sailboat that belonged to Mimi Rattigan (Mimi died in a car crash several years later). It was a rainy afternoon, so the beach was empty. Kevin showed up, crawled under the boat with Katie, and said he had heard the most amazing new album titled Tommy by the Who.

I fell into a quagmire of Abbott and Costello and asked Tommy the Who? thinking I’d misunderstood him.

Kevin grinned and I should’ve understood, but due to what I’d been inhaling, I failed the test. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s right.”

We went back and forth a few times and I finally figured it out when he started laughing and pointing at me like I was a beached flounder.

Not long after, I went through a bad break-up that drove me into a stupor of self-doubt and misunderstanding.

The rock in the picture was once used by local Native American women to grind corn while watching their men in the harbor fishing.

That boulder, dragged into location by a glacier, became a place for me to retreat when I needed time to think and stare at the blasted movies, which insisted on grinding through my head explaining what-ifs and such.

Every day I sat on the rock, Katie would show up and in her casual way demand attention until she decided to drape herself on the rock alongside me and relax with a possessiveness only an animal like she could get away with. She helped me re-evaluate my opinions and get on with attempting to live a worthwhile life.

She was a good friend and deserves recognition.