Two of America’s most-loved authors, Beverly Cleary and Larry McMurtry, died on the same day, leaving holes in the hearts of Americans who loved irascible Ramona Quimby and retired Texas Rangers Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call.

We read Cleary’s books when we were children, embracing “Beezus and Ramona” and “Henry Huggins.” 

McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Lonesome Dove,” made him famous, although he never embraced it like his fans.

I remember reading “Lonesome Dove” when I lived in Albuquerque. I started on a Friday night, sobbing hours later when Gus died, and finishing early Saturday. I loved it so much that when the book was made into a miniseries in 1989, I bought my first TV just so I could watch it.

The miniseries was that rare, brilliant adaptation of the book. 

After beloved author Toni Morrison died in 2019, I wrote about books, how their words grip us, change us, mold us, and how books make us laugh and cry — sometimes at the same time.

But the deaths of these two giants on the same day, on March 25, shook me. Cleary was 104, McMurtry was 84. It reminded me of how much I mourned the death of actress Mary Tyler Moore in 2017 and how her role as an associate producer of a fictional Minneapolis TV station felt like such a part of me.

Same with Cleary and McMurtry, and I read everything I could on them.  

Cleary’s stories “served as a collective touchstone for the childhoods of many baby boomers, and succeeding generations, who saw themselves in the pages of her work,” Valerie J. Nelsen wrote in The Los Angeles Times.

Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse noted how Cleary in 1950 took “every attribute that girls were then warned away from — bossiness, brashness, hot temper — and she tucked them all into one character.” And Ramona Quimby became an inspiration.

First Lady Jill Biden, author Judy Blume and actress Reese Witherspoon were among those who paid tribute to Cleary on Twitter, the viral version of a chain-link fence filled with flowers and notes. 

The news devastated Colorado Public Radio’s Megan Verlee, who had been covering the grocery store shooting in Boulder that claimed 10 lives.

“THIS GODFORSAKEN WEEK,” tweeted Verlee, who reads books to her two young children.

One of my favorite tributes came from Laura Trujillo Faherty, a co-worker from The Albuquerque Tribune all those years ago. 

“The first series of books I remember being able to read on my own were those from Beverly Cleary,” she wrote on Facebook.

“I felt like I was so grown up reading them alone, yet so much like a kid, just like Ramona. Cleary made it OK to not always make the right choices, to be jealous or afraid, to fall and scrape your knees. She showed what it was like to live with deep curiosity. She made it OK to have your older sister think you were a pest.”

Trujillo would go on to read the books to her four children.

I asked my sister Caroline, the head librarian at a New York school, what she thought of Cleary’s books. Naturally she mentioned “sassy” Ramona Quimby, but it was her other sentiments that intrigued me.

“As a young woman who actually saw her first live mouse not on our farm in South Dakota, but in my little apartment in New York City, I kept thinking about what adventures that little guy may have been on and where his tiny motorcycle might be stashed,” she wrote in an e-mail. 

Caroline was referring to another Cleary character, one I was not familiar with: Ralph the Mouse. 

“The venture started with ‘The Mouse and the Motorcycle,’ which I loved! Then came ‘Runaway Ralph,’ and ‘Ralph S. Mouse’ rounded out the trilogy. All brilliant!!!” 

During my childhood, the public library was in one of those wonderful old Carnegie buildings, this one constructed in 1903, and the children’s books were in the basement. 

These days I happen to be in my hometown of Vermillion, S.D., helping my mother after back surgery.

I thought of going to the library, which has since moved to a new building just south, to see if they kept records dating back to the 1960s and ‘70s. I wanted to see what books I checked out. I thought better of it, thinking they would discover my unpaid fines for late and lost books and think they had a way to finance the library budget for a year.

But I did drive by the library the other night with my sister Mary Kay. She told me that the woman who was the librarian in our time, Helen Baity, died this year at the age of 92.

“Do you remember her?” Mary Kay asked.

I did not. But then I looked up Baity’s obituary and saw her picture and then I remembered her. Her birthdate caught my eye — March 25 — the same day that Cleary and McMurtry died.

After Cleary’s death, NPR replayed an interview from 2006. 

“I don’t think anything takes the place of reading,” Cleary said, mentioning a letter from a little girl who said that reading in her room by herself was “like having a little television set in your head.”

Cleary gave wonderful interviews, but McMurtry, especially in his later years, not so much. I once heard then KOA-radio host Steffan Tubbs try to pull some words from the author during an interview.

Fans, including author Stephen King, responded on Twitter to McMurtry’s death.

“Larry McMurtry was a great storyteller. I learned from him, which was important. I was entertained by him, which was ALL important.

RIP, cowboy.

Horseman, pass by.”

I was fascinated by Kyle Smith’s article in the National Review on “The Unappreciated Genius of Larry McMurtry.” 

“What set McMurtry apart from even most of the greatest male novelists was that he was genuinely fascinated with the interior lives of women rather than limiting his attentions to how they either helped or hindered the pursuits of men,” Smith wrote. 

Look at Ruth Popper, the lonely, middle-age coach’s wife in the 1971 movie “The Last Picture Show,” which was based on the book of the same name by McMurtry. Cloris Leachman won an Oscar playing the role. When Leachman died in January, critics praised her work on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” of course, which is how many of us remember her. 

But the depth of her acting chops was discovered when she portrayed the character McMurtry had written.

McMurtry also wrote “Terms of Endearment,” although the movie and the book seem worlds apart to me. Smith wrote that the daughter, Emma, was the author’s “special favorite creation, through whom he considered the underpinnings of ordinary life.” 

Women as real people. I wonder if Larry McMurtry read Beverly Cleary’s books when he was growing up.