First on behalf of my Father and family, we’d like to thank you all for attending today. It means so much to us to see how many lives she touched and to feel and hear your support at this time. When planning tonight’s celebration, we felt it important to share the many sides of mom. Moving to California at age 23 and not being able to visit often has resulted in the fact that I do not really know Audrey, church deacon or Mrs. Owens, Guardian ad litem the way that you do. These are chapters in her life that we did not share much and so I didn’t know her in these roles very well. Because of this, I unfortunately have not had the pleasure of meeting many of you until today, although something tells me you heard all about me. So it is truly special that Pastor Marilyn and Brant told us about their experiences they shared with Audrey and in particular, the positive impact she was able to make within the community. Thank you both. Thank you also to Cindy and the entire Job’s/Masonic family that have provided support to Dad and I during this time and let us use the Temple tonight. As I look around the room, particularly this room, where countless initiations, inspections, installations – including my own as Honored Queen and Dad as Worshipful Master, happened, my heart and soul are filled with so many good memories and special friendships. Although I do feel naked without my white hose and gavel. So while you’ve now heard about the later decades of mom’s life, I thought I’d share the Audrey I knew. Mom. Audrey Louise Evans was born November 24, 1944 to June Hanna Papp and Charles Evans. She was soon followed by Aunt Debbie and Uncle Chick. They lived in what was then the “suburbs” of Kenmore and the canal was directly in their backyard. Apparently this is where Mom perfected her swimming and also lifesaving, of the many children that would nearly drown. I know this is what prompted her to take me to the YMCA fresh out of diapers to learn to blow bubbles and kick, kick, kick. She was very active in her church youth group, and at age 18, she left home and made the very independent move of going to live with her Grandma Laverne. Her first job was at Akron’s Polsky’s department store as an elevator operator. She caught the eye of a young man working in the stockroom. However, was quickly warned that she should stay away from Glenn, as he was a “bad boy”, since he drove around in a 2 seater Triumph TR3. However, as so many “good girls” do, she broke and their first date was to watch Lord of the Flies at the art theater in Cuyahoga Falls. For those unfamiliar with this plot line, which was originally a book, in the midst of wartime evacuation, a British plan crashes near a remote isolated pacific island. The only survivors are pre adolescent boys. They begin the task of survival and and are quite organized at first. This eventually deteriorates and 2 factions develop and warring ensues with some horrifying and brutal outcomes. Most readers and critics believe that this story is an allegory to the central question of whether man is inherently good or bad. According to my parents, they agreed completely on what they thought the movie portrayed, that man is inherently…evil. That night, he asked her to marry him. She said yes. 3 years later they married at Akron City Hall on Friday, November 3, 1965. They chose this day, because it was Dad’s day off. It was just the 2 of them and the judge, he had just turned 21 and she about to. With her gray suit she carried a delicate white handkerchief with blue stitching that belonged to her Grandma Bessie. They set up household in Akron, Dad working and Mom a homemaker, it was the mid 60s after all. Eventually late on a Monday evening in February, 1968, I was welcomed into the world. One of my earliest memories of Audrey, the mom is either cleaning the bedroom rug, because I got sick…again…or cleaning my bottom. Neither task seemed to please her. As a full time mommy, she made sure we enjoyed a lot of interesting (and free) adventures – like feeding the birds at the park, or making crafts with popsickle sticks and paper plates, playing chutes and ladders, going to the Canton Art Museum to see Pegasus, walking at The Wildnerness Center in Wilmont and especially our weekly library trip, where I was allowed to bring home a stack this high of children’s books to read. Reading was a very common activity in our household and something she loved at this time. At one point, we had 30 linear feet of filled bookshelves. When I began grade school at Lake Cable elementary, my mother one of her first volunteering stints, as a reading tutor. Mom was not quite the cook that many of you knew today. Pampered Chef hadn’t yet been invented, and there was a strict budget. Each Sunday she would plan the week’s menu so that she could maximize her shopping dollars and time. So she had her “go to” combos: tuna fish sandwiches with bean with bacon soup, macaroni and cheese with fish sticks, spaghetti with meat sauce – today called Bolognese. As she was pretty much the sole cook, and in the 70s, often on a diet, Dad and I fell victim. I am still to this day scarred by her claim that canned French cut green beans, when covered in said Bolognese sauce, “tastes just like pasta” it doesn’t. In 1978, mom and dad decided it was time to buy a house, and mom began working a regular job, as a home health aide at a local nursing home. With this major change, I became one of the first latch key kids in the neighborhood. She made sure to take me to work with her, both to learn to respect and enjoy the elderly, but also to see how physically demanding the job was. Her tactic was to make sure I knew the kind of job I would have, if I did not do well in school and didn’t go to college. At this time, when Mom began a weekly tradition of Monday night dinner at Denny’s with me, just the 2 of us. She would always order the burger, medium rare, with thousand island dressing and I would order the spaghetti. I know we must have talked a lot, as well as fight, but I always knew that was our time together. I very much was raised in a liberal household and a regular diet of Marlo Thomas and friends Free to be you and me played on the record player. When asked at this time what I wanted to be when I grew up, it was either the ice cream man, or chief brain surgeon. It never occurred to me that because I was a girl, I couldn’t do both. I just as easily played with my football as I did with my play stove. I know that I am who I am today, as a strong, intelligent, independent, successful and happy woman, is because of their belief to raise me a little differently than what they had known. Although raising an independent young woman, means you get to suffer through and independent teenage years as well. One of our biggest clashes was over the phone, but not what you think! In our house, the phone was her domain. Don’t think for a second we were allowed to be on it. Now since this was prior to cell, prior to even cordless…Mom found a way to maintain her 4 hour marathon phone calls and still do the laundry. She installed a 50 foot jack line and a 20 foot coiled receiver cord. That phone went into the basement, up in the attic, into the bathroom, but usually near the couch, where Mom often was, reading/talking and smoking. Instilled in me by mom, and dad, was a love of learning and asking questions. I’ve been to so many historical sites, I’m sure I could churn butter right now. On our trips together then and in later years, we had some of our best laughs, even when annoyed. Our first visit to Arizona to visit my grandparents and Mom was driving the car through the Superstition mountains. She was freaking out a bit with the elevation, curves, drop offs and narrow lanes. Dad says, “it’s just like driving the mountains in West Virginia when we visit Aunt Lou” She yells, as we tear around another curve, “But you never let me drive in West Virginia!!!!” Mom and Dad made many more trips out West once I moved to California. They were always up for anything, within reason and we would save all year for these Christmas trips and explored much of the state. Although their version of experiencing the tourist attractions was more of a checksheet. At the Golden Gate bridge, for which most will walk most, if not all of the 3.1 miles… was to “ok, that’s good, check. Where are we eating next?” This is also where I think mom discovered her love of good chips and salsa and quesadillas, I mean quesadillas. Their last visit to San Francisco was November 2011 when I asked them to come and meet Doug before his deployment that January. At dinner that first night Mom, in her usual great way with small talk, was able to get him to speak in more than monosyllables. She was doing really great, until the food arrived and she asked him “Could you pass me the salt Scott?” - ,my boyfriend from a decade earlier. She never quite lived that down. But when engaged, Doug immediately received a Home Depot gift card, and instructions to make the house nice “for the queen” along with a big Thank You. Unfortunately, my parents were too ill to travel to California last September for our wedding, but when Mom heard I was making a brooch bouquet to carry, she quickly sent a box with all kinds of jewels, including a beautiful crystal necklace set Dad gave her for their first wedding anniversary, and a few brooches. She also sent wrapped in tissue paper, with a post it note that said “Great Grandma Bessie”, a beautiful white handkerchief with delicate blue stitching. I carried all this with me when I got married at City Hall, just like her. Thank you.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 00:12:21 +0000