The 53rd Birthday of My Dearest Vanessa Marquez

Today my dearest Vanessa Marquez would have turned 53. She was born on December 21 1968 in Los Angeles County. Many will be familiar with Vanessa from her role as Ana Delgado in the classic film Stand and Deliver (1988) and Nurse Wendy Goldman on the TV series ER. She also appeared in such movies as Twenty Bucks (1993) and Father Hood (1993). She was a regular on the TV show Culture Clash and she guest starred on shows from Seinfeld to Nurses. She also appeared many times on stage, in such productions as Demon Wine, August 29, and Street of the Sun.

While for many Vanessa was a talented and well-known actress, for me she was  both my dearest friend and a woman I adored. Like many I had first seen her in Stand and Deliver. I later remember watching the Nurses episode "The One After the Earthquake" and thinking the young guest star on the episode was remarkably pretty, only to learn later she had played Ana Delgado in one of my favourite movies, Stand and Deliver. Of course, that fall I began seeing Vanessa regularly as Wendy on ER. Wendy was (and still is) my favourite character on ER, and I even had a crush on her at the time. When Vanessa and I met as two of the original members of #TCMParty (the group of Turner Classic Movies fans who live tweet to movies on that channel), I knew exactly who she was, even if I was a bit doubtful at first that it was really her (I'd encountered people impersonating celebrities on Twitter before). I soon learned that not only was Vanessa very talented, but she was also entirely wonderful. She was sweet, thoughtful, warm, down-to-earth, intelligent, and funny. I also learned we had a good deal in common. Vanessa and I became friends, and we even grew close. Eventually we would be in touch nearly every single day, through social media, through texts, and through phone calls. Vanessa was my dearest friend and I loved her very, very much. If today is a bit bittersweet for me, that is the reason.

I will freely admit that I thought (and still think) Vanessa was the most beautiful woman to ever live. I am sure that even now Vanessa would disagree. She once took this survey on Facebook, "What Kind of Attractive Are You?" and got the result, "Adorable." She complained that she was tired of being cute. She wanted to be beautiful, gorgeous, glamorous, sexy, or hot. I told her that she was beautiful, gorgeous, glamorous, sexy, and hot. Vanessa still maintained she was only cute at best, but she accepted it when I told her that to me she was beautiful, gorgeous, glamorous, sexy, and hot. Over the past year I have bought slides of pictures of Vanessa taken at various events. I submit these as proof that Vanessa was far more than cute. She was absolutely gorgeous. I have to apologize for the quality of some of the pictures. I lack a proper slide scanner and so I had to use my smartphone and a lightbox.

This first photo is one of my favourites of the ones I got this year. It is from the NBC All-Star Reception at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Pasadena on  January 9,1995.

This is another photo from the NBC All-Star Reception at the Ritz Carlton in Pasadena on January 9 1995.

This may well be my absolute favourite of the slides I got, as I think Vanessa absolutely radiates Old Hollywood glamour. This is from the 27th NAACP Image Awards held at the Pasadena Civic Centre on April 6 1996. ER had been nominated for several awards.

This picture is from the Memory Walk to benefit Alzheimer's disease at the Los Angeles Zoo on October 7 1995. That's fellow ER cast member Lily Mariye in the background.

This photo is from An Evening at the Net at the UCLA Tennis Center on July 31 1995. An Evening at the Net that year was a benefit for the California State Summer School for the Arts.

This is a picture from the Red Cross Spirit Awards held at Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel on March 30 1996.

This photo is from the premiere of the movie Desperado (1995) at Manns National Theatre in Westwood, California.

Embed from Getty Images

For those of you who wanted to see all of Vanessa's outfit from the Desperado premiere, I found it on Getty Images, where for some odd reason they didn't note that it was Vanessa Marquez.
Of course, here I have to stress that Vanessa's beauty was not merely skin deep. She wasn't just physically beautiful, but she was an entirely wonderful person. As our mutual friend Paula Guthat said of Vanessa, "She's lovely through and through." Whenever one of her friends was sick or feeling down, Vanessa was always the first to comfort them. She had this remarkable ability to remember little things about people, down to the smallest detail. She was always the first to take up for one of her friends whenever one of them was attacked. Even when she was feeling poorly (which, given her health, could be often), she always maintained a cheery disposition. Vanessa had a great sense of humour and she was very intelligent. She was much, much more than a pretty face.

If I was in love with Vanessa, it was not because she was beautiful, but because she was an entirely wonderful person. She worried about me when I was sick. She had this incredible knack for cheering me up whenever I felt my worst. She was happy for me when something good happened to me and sad when something bad happened to me. If today is a bittersweet day for me, it is because it is a happy day because the one person I love more than any other was born, yet it is a sad day because she is no longer with us. I do hope that Vanessa has a happy birthday in the hereafter, and that she realizes just how very loved she is.