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Elizabeth Edwards passed away this week and is being warmly remembered from all corners. Many people talk about her great heart and the strength of her resilience, and it's true that she was an incredible model for anyone dealing with personal pain.

But I remember her best for being whip smart and unbelievably charming. I met her once (when the not-very-good photo at left was taken), and she was even more brilliant and impressive in person. Her death is a huge loss for Chapel Hill, for North Carolina, and for the whole country that has been a beneficiary of her health care activism in recent years.

For those who haven't been reading OP forever, here's the first of several comments she posted here in 2005 after the Edwards' moved to Orange County. And below is the text of a 2006 OP post called "Elizabeth Edwards, keeping it real."

I'm the guy who wrote the letter to the Chapel Hill Weekly in September suggesting that people supporting a Costco in Orange County should consider moving to Cary.   Those who chose to  respond rightly condemned me for the arrogant tone of my writing, but if I read the terms of Orange Politics correctly, we should strive to deal in ideas, not personal attacks.   I care a lot about this place, so sometimes my rhetoric gets away from me.   I apologize for my tone, but not my ideas.   One may argue that it is obnoxious to be anti-growth since I was once a new person here myself some forty years ago.   (And I know something of struggling here as a state employee.  I lived in a house with three room mates for some sixteen years before I was able to buy a home in Carrboro.)