[Dave Lefurgey]

Update for anyone interested in and reading this:
Eulogy: Received a letter from Pat Martin's (Conran) daughter, Virginnia. Pat was the lady spy who worked with Cotton and my uncle and even spied in Italy on the ground. Pat died last October in her early 90's. When I first contacted her a few years ago, she was riding her horse on her ranch in Hawaii every morning. At 18 years she sailed a boat around the Mediterranean in the early 1930's. She also did yacht racing and car racing at a time when women didn't do those things. With her spy activities in Italy, she was in the social circles of Herman Goering and Benito Mussolini. When she and Cotton broke up, she married an RAF pilot who was killed during the war, then later married a US army officer from Eisebhauer's D-Day planning staff, who later became a Brigadier General. They travelled a lot and on one trip, Pat played polo with the President of Pakistan, then took her 4 children on a horseback trek through the Khyber Pass and into the Hindu Cush, and played polo with the local tribal chieftains there. People where Pat lived in Hawaii knew & loved her, affectionately calling her their 'spy'. A couple of years ago she took an ocean cruise to South America and at 88 yrs of age went riding out on the plains with the gaucho cowboys, then went on some kind of expedition to Antarctica. She was a strong proponent for the environment. Last January she was training to race row boats in a 500 metre race. My wife and I visited her in March last year and she was the type of person who you could talk with for hours and days and not even notice the time pass. When we left, she grabbed my hands, looked me in the eye and said, "You're a rebel." My ego aside, coming from her, I consider that to be a very high compliment. She told her children that "Life isn't fair. If it was fair, you wouldn't have half the things you have now." What a remarkable woman and lady! I'll miss her. She wrote out her lifestory for her family and I've been encouaging her daughter to publish it as a book. It would be a fitting tribute, so I hope she does.