See you later, Tammy

Maybe we had just finished an assignment together. But Tammy Abbott, who worked as a photographer at the Glendale News-Press toward the tail end of my stint at the newspaper, and I had decided to stop at a Coffee Bean to enjoy a quiet moment before going back to the newsroom. That was when she told me she was fighting cancer, and even though she was so exhausted from the job and so stressed out from the constant berating she was getting from our managing editor at the time, she was grateful for her job. Not only did the job give her much-needed health care benefits, she was able to do something she loved — photography.

I’ve kept in touch with most of my News-Press cohorts, through Facebook, and have managed to have lunch with one or two and even attend the wedding of another. But it grieves me to say that since I left the News-Press, I haven’t seen Tammy. I did keep up with her and news of her health thanks to another former coworker, Jacqui Brown. Jacqui posted this message early Sunday morning:

Heaven added a beautiful, perfectly new angel today.

With a heavy heart, I bid farewell to my dearest, sweetest friend, Tammy Abbott, who lost the battle at 2:45 am this morning. You rocked it right to the end girl. You taught me what being brave was all about!

I regret that I can’t say more about Tammy, other than she was always sweet, worked impressively hard on her craft and that I witnessed her take a lot of punches from one person who eventually made me crack at one point and just not care anymore. Her blog, Eddie Adams Workshop profile and obituary in the Burbank Leader says so much more about her. However, the online story doesn’t include any of the photos that she took, so here’s a link to a pdf of the page that includes some of her photos.

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