In Loving Memory of Southern CA Vet Dr. RL Blair, DVM, 1959-2026

Dr. RL Blair, DVM, 1959-2026

Written by Sarah Mapp Cullins:

I didn’t sleep well last night, I knew this day was coming and my thoughts were full of memories of Aunt Becky. My mind was trying to put an orderly story of the life she led, from my perspective.

Becky was not a blood relative; she was 16 years younger than my mother and 16 years older than me. She came into our lives as the assistant to our veterinarian, Dr. Elsworth. I was a child and to me she has just always been there. I do not really know how she became Aunt Becky, except she loved my parents and so she loved me, I had babies and she loved them too.

When I was young she took me to riding lessons at Judy Wrights’ in Chino. She drove me to horse shows and took me to lunch. I remember just running errands with her, to her house, to her parents’ house, to the feed store. Thinking back on it, why the heck did we spend so much time in the truck? She told me inappropriate jokes and stories I will not repeat.

Becky raised racing quarter horses, worked for Dr. Elsworth and went to college, for years and years and years. My parents always talked about how smart she was and that she was a professional student. My mom would say “she keeps getting degrees”. Eventually I went to high school, and she went to vet school at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. Emily still wears a KSU sweatshirt that Becky gave me her first trip back home for break in 1989 or 1990.

Every time she came home it seems like she brought a new pet, stowed away under the front seat of her truck until she crossed the state line. These included a few ferrets, a cat, and a retired racing greyhound. While she was at college she found me the “perfect” horse and my parents bought him sight unseen and had Streak of Gin shipped out. He was in fact not the perfect horse and she either thought way more of me or way less of me than I knew.

My folks helped take care of her horses while she was away at school. When she graduated, she set her office phone up at our house.

She had a stallion named Mr. Go Bar and another Ghost Zapper, he was grey. She had a mare named Demur But Deadly. That mare lost a foal a few months along and she put the tiny baby in a mason jar with embalming fluid and a name tag that read Demur But Dead. One of my favorite things to do at her house was look through the barn of oddities where Demur But Dead was housed and her pet Rattlesnakes lived. In high school, she loaned me a snake for a school video project. It bit my friend; luckily it was not a rattle snake.

When I moved away, she gave me her radar detector for the drive and a grey toolbox full of emergency medical supplies for my horse. The detector is long gone, but that toolbox is still in my horse trailer and over the years Becky continued to refill it with needed supplies and answered the phone whenever I needed to know how to use them.

When Chris and I got married she gave us a queen bed that she assured me her mother did not die in…I am now not so sure of that.

The day before our oldest child, Ty, was born, Becky drove my parents to the airport so they could be there for the birth. On the way she asked them, “What are Chris and Sarah naming the baby? Is it Noodlehead?” That was that — he has been Noodlehead since the day before he was born. She acted like she didn’t like kids, but when we showed up at my parents’ house with a 1 month old child called Noodlehead, she arrived with a Radio Flyer Wagon with a cover like an old time horse or ox pulled wagon would have, and it was full of toys and clothes and a lot of things that child would not need for years. That was the start of it, from birth until the last Christmas she was well, my 3 children were inundated with Christmas gifts, courtesy of Aunt Becky.

When Em was 3, she bought her a horse, and when she was 4 or 5 she showed up at the house with a syringe box containing a tiny bunny. She brought me 2 kittens and when Ty mentioned he wanted a Chinchilla, Softo Springytail arrived at our door. Becky had pet skunks and luckily, the look on my face when the kids repeatedly asked her for one every time they saw her for years was enough to keep her from bringing them one. Her last pet that I’m aware of is a hairless, dwarf cat named Sid. Sid would wear a sweater and lay across the dashboard of her van while she went on calls.

Becky was the best gift wrapper I ever met, all of them were perfect and beautiful with bows and ornaments tied to the outside. She loved Christmas or us or both. When I told her that we were going to have Christmas at our house one year, she came up to Northern California with my parents toting a complete 8 person set of Christmas dishes (plates, salad plates, bowls and glasses), because I didn’t have any.

I still use those dishes every Christmas 25+ years later. She is the reason for every Fitz & Floyd ornament and cookie jar at our house. She kept my mom in Spode and my dad with the perfect gifts for an old cowboy. Because of Becky we always had Whiskey Prailenes, deviled eggs, the Jello thing, and the spinach soufflé (which evolved over the years into a cheese soufflé with spinach for color) at every holiday event. She would sit and tell stories poking fun at all of us, just like an Aunt does.

As far as I know she always had a boyfriend named Steve, they lived together until the day she passed away. She loved him, but she also gave him a Black Widow spider in a ring box for Christmas one year. I am sure it was immaculately wrapped.

The last few months were particularly hard on her, and I am glad that she is no longer suffering, but it doesn’t ease the sting. Aunt Becky was grouchy, honest, funny and loved us like we were her family and we are all going to miss her.

Rest easy, Dr. Blair. We loved you, too.

Sarah