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together a bonus gift—all of which is forwarded to various animal charities in my honor. They are a great group.
    As well as sending out newsletters to the members about my activities, Kay manages to put out a great journal every year, comprising pictures and articles and pet news sent in by club members, which keeps us all updated on one another. She did all that while working as a fourth-grade schoolteacher until she retired. Lee, after serving as a nurse in the military, became head surgical nurse at UCLA Hospital until her retirement. I am most grateful that they haven’t retired from my life!
    Fans, in general, continue to amaze me. When I’m working out of town and I show up at different studios for appearances, no matter which city we are in, there is always a group waiting, holding pictures of me to be autographed. How do they know my schedule when I hardly know it myself? Time is always short, and I feel bad when sometimes they rush me past and I can’t stop and sign, but these people always seem to understand and keep smiling.
    Fan mail is something else again, with which my invaluable assistant Donna Ellerbusch and I contend! We try to keep up, but the mail continues to burgeon. A good percentage of it consists of picture requests, which I sign for Donna to send. I can’t answer it all, of course, but there are a few categories that Donna sets aside, to which I do respond: those who have just lost a life partner and need to share their pain with someone who has been through it; boys and girls achieving Eagle Scout and the Gold Award, respectively; hurting individuals reporting the loss of a beloved pet; and students writing me as part of a school project. My answers are understandably brief, but answer I must.
    Fellow actors have urged me to send the mail to companies that make a business of handling fan mail rather than complicate a busy schedule. One actor friend maintains that he never deals with his fan mail in any way—he just dumps it.
    Truth be told, I need to read these letters to discover what I’m doing right or, more important, wrong , and these writers don’t hesitate to tell you.
     
     
    [Editor’s Note: My life has changed dramatically since I began writing this book.]
    I used to be able to travel alone without thinking about it. I can’t do that anymore. I have to have a meet-and-greet on both ends to get me through the airport. People are just being nice, but recently I actually missed a plane because I couldn’t break away.
    Between the Snickers commercial and the explosion of projects on which I worked in the past year, and a whole generation of fans who have met me through syndication, it seems like the number of people who call themselves fans just keeps growing. (There was a time when The Golden Girls was on four times a day!)
    I don’t mean for this to sound self-serving, but it can be a problem, and yet these are the people responsible for your good fortune!
    Please know how grateful I am. Even if I do have to rush by to catch a plane!

    With Dancer.
    GLOBE PHOTOS

STAGECRAFT

    ASSOCIATED PRESS/CLIFF OWEN

RANGER
    O ne of the first questions in every interview since I started in television more than sixty years ago has always been, “When you were growing up, did you always want to be in show business?”
    My answer has never changed. As a kid, show business wasn’t even in the mix. As far back as I can remember, I wanted to be either a forest ranger or a zookeeper. The problem was, back then a girl wasn’t allowed to be either one.
    That was a real problem for a girl who grew up the way I did. Even today , my earliest, fondest memories are of the pack trips in the High Sierras on horseback I took every summer with my mom and dad. Mules carried our camping equipment and food supplies. The first time we went, I was just four years old and rode in front of Daddy on his horse. The following year I graduated to a mount of my own.
    It was a two-day trip to our destination, Rae