Service for Helen Caroline DeVaneaugh Delaney 02/01/2000

9/27/1914 - 1/27/2000

Welcome

Tribute to Mother - by Carol Joy Graham - read by Laura Delaney

Our mother, Caroline DeVaneaugh Delaney, had so many qualities - charm, wit, compassion, talent, courage, talent, tenacity -- that it would take too much time to list them.

As a child I thought she was the prettiest; later on, I realized her wisdom.

She struggled to get an education in New York during the Depression. She worked parttime at Bloomingdales.

Later on she became a top teacher in Seattle, as she didn't use her teaching credential until after she was widowed.

After retirement, she began new careers as a caregiver and child care worker.

Mother didn't realize her dream of a real home until after retiring from teaching. We had always lived in apartments or rented houses.

But she took sudden retirement that made our heads spin. She spurned a new yearly teaching contract, moved to Spokane, bought a house, and devoted herself to grandmothering Mollie and Laura.

She enjoyed her Spokane friends, and loved her little brown house with garden, her cat and dog.

We're so glad that she never had to go to a nursing home.

Even stiff with arthritis, she would sit on her porch and exult "I do love my little house."

That's one of my last vivid memories of this amazing woman.

Song - Angel Band Traditional Southern Spiritual

Angel Band

Traditional Southern Spiritual sung by family members upon a loved one's passing. Family members would stand around the bed of the departed, hold hands, and sing this song.

Click here to Listen to Angel Band Guitar Melody played by Frank Delaney

1st Verse

My evening sun is sinking fast, my race is almost run,

my strongest trials now are past, my triumph has begun.

Chorus:

Oh come, Angel band, come and around me stand,

take me away on your snow white wings, to my immortal home.

2nd Verse

I know I'm joining holy ranks, of friends and loved ones dear.

I brushed the dew on Jordan's banks, I know the crossing's near.

Chorus Again

Our Grandma - Co-read by Mollie and Laura Delaney

We do not have one friend, nor do we know anyone of our age for that matter, who has had the experience of knowing a grandparent as we knew our Grandmother. Nobody we know has had it so vividly proven to them the depth of caring and the limitless acts of selflessness that our Grandma displayed over and over with us. Her devotion to doing everything in her power to insure that we lived to the fullest, as children and adults, fills us with love and appreciation, and of course, a yearning for the chance to have thanked her one more time.

As children, we spent a lot of time with Grandma - she was always just naturally there. Her voice echoes in the background of most of our family videotapes, most notably the tapes of our first days of school - an event Grandma wouldn't have missed for the world. Our education, formal and informal, was Grandma's major ambition for us. And, like many of her students from Highpoint and the various schools at which she taught would say, she was one of our greatest teachers.

We were both lucky to inherit some of my Grandma's qualities and characteristics, and on top of those, she taught us many other things that have gotten us to where we are now. She of course taught us the importance of education, of taking advantage of whatever - books, traveling, people, etc. to educate ourselves. She taught us not to stand back, to speak up for ourselves and to be empowered by our womanhood. She taught us to be kind toward others, especially to each other, and to be grateful for our good fortune. Most importantly, she taught us that the simplicity of hard work, common sense, and a genuine and loving character is all anyone needs to be successful.

In addition to the major principles and values Grandma helped to instill in us, she did so many "little things" that will always mean just as much to me. For example, as children when she would pick me up from school, my favorite snack would always be awaiting me on her front passenger seat - a plate full of bacon fresh off the skillet. Whenever we visited Grandma's house, all the dolls and stuffed animals would be arranged in some sort of amusing plot that tickled my Sister and me to pieces and inspired our day of play (Grandma's imagination was truly incredible). Grandma would regularly bestow her bargain deals from Goodwill and Value Village upon Mollie and me. During my teenage years, I often found these second-hand goods embarrassing, but lately I've again found amusement in them. Of late, it was the Yo Quiero Taco Bell Night Gown -Shirt she gave me picturing a life-sized Chihuahua that truly made my heart bleed.

My days spent with Grandma when I was younger were usually unplanned but unusually productive in many ways. She taught me how to incorporate a vision into everything that we did together. The garden must be tended to so that we could have home grown vegetables with dinner. The coloring must be done to help decorate Grammy's walls. The sprinklers must be turned on and run through to help the grass grow. The peonies must be tended to so that they could be cut and given to friends. She taught me that life is about balance. Generous helpings of neopolitan ice cream was rewarded when vegetables were eaten. Television could be watched so as long as books were read before sleep. Homework must be done to get good use out of play time. She afforded me the luxury of her stories, her wisdom, and her life approach. She always made sense to me; as a question asking 5 year old, to a skeptical teenager, to a twenty two year old "adult" I was always assured that Grandma was the authority.

These are just a few examples of our cherished memories of our Grandmother. They all demonstrate an amazing amount of thoughtfulness and love, and that is how we will always remember her. We are lucky and we are blessed to have been so profoundly influenced by such a remarkable woman.

Eulogy to my Mother - Frank Delaney

My mother, Helen Caroline DeVaneaugh Delaney, was born in Ruby, Alaska, maybe on September 27, 1914. The town courthouse burnt down, so they had to rely on the old-timers to determine who was born when. Some of them said that date, other said October or maybe even November. Because of this, my mom celebrated a birthday season, rather than a birthday. It was her way of doing things.

Ruby is located on the south bank of the Yukon River, about 50 air miles east of Galena and 230 air miles west of Fairbanks. Current population is 204. Last year my Mom and I followed the Iditarod on the Internet, and she was excited to find current pictures of Ruby. We also even contacted someone there who had known her Dad and we exchanged email.

My grandfather - her Father, Thomas Jones DeVaneaugh, is listed in the Encyclopedia of Northwest Biography. He served in the Army signal corps in Alaska, and upon his discharge moved to Ruby, where he strung the first telegraph lines in the area. When radio replaced telegraphy, he turned to merchandising and ran a successful store until 1939, when he moved to Seattle.

I wrote a radio commentary on my Grandfather's radio for my mother which aired on KPBX in 1989 and which is on display here.

But my grandparents had divorced way before then, and my grandmother, Louise MacCormac, moved her family to Portland, Maine. She attended nursing school right here in Spokane, and worked in nursing around the country, leaving her family with her sister in Portland. My mom attended Catholic girls boarding school for elementary and highschool there, and often attended summer camps in Maine.

She then attended Gorham State Teacher College in Gorham Maine, and later attended Columbia University in New York, where she met my father, Frank Delaney Sr.

They were married, and when my dad got his master's degree, they moved to New York City, where he went to work as a speech professor at City College of New York. He later also taught at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, and taught a speech clinic at Bellvue Hospital in Manhattan.

As a child we always seemed to move between New York and Portland Maine, sometimes alternating school years in each location. My sister and I also attended Catholic school, at St. Joseph's academy in Washington Square Park. In Portland we would live with my grandmother at her house, who was by then retired.

My mother instilled in me a love of reading. I can remember the day I got my first library card, taking my red wagon to the library and filling it with books. She taught me to appreciate the children's classics, like Winnie the Pooh, and the Thornton Burgess series of books about all the forest animals, Reddy Fox, Granny Fox, Sammy the Jay, and dozens of others. I came to call my Grandmother Granny Fox, because she was old and wise.

We used to go for Sunday drives in Maine, my sister and I fighting for the front seat, and my Granny Fox sitting in the back, with her little pillbox hat. My mother would often drive, and seemed to have an endless sense of adventure, and direction. I can remember her pulling off the road, taking off her clothes down to her swimming suit, and diving directly into lake or ocean water, often to the astonished dismay of my father, who was city-bred Irish-Catholic, not used to such behavior by women.

My mom always seemed to have a lot of interesting friends, people who raised worms and knew where the good fishing holes where, people who knew how to live in the woods; my Mom seemed to know everybody interesting. At school she always knew my teachers, so i had to be on extra good behavior.

One time we were on a Sunday drive in the middle of a forest, and she said that she though she remembered a certain road, that had a camp sign. We drove down the road, and saw that it was a camp, but closed in the off season. There was a caretaker there, and he let us into the main camp building. There among pictures dating back to the 1920's we saw a couple pictures of my mom, listed as outstanding athlete and camper of her time. From that day on I knew my Mom was really a special person.

When we lived in New York she was always taking me to museums, movie theater, art galleries, Broadway plays, and events at Madison Square Gardens. She liked sports, and often told me I was almost born in Yankee Stadium. She said she wanted me to have a well rounded education and an apprecation for the arts. I was a shy little kid wearing a Catholic school uniform; blazer, short pants, and a beany, but my Mom never gave up and always seemed to believe there was hope for me.

My father died suddenly when I was a young teenager, and my Mom was thrust into the job of family breadwinner. She had to go back to school and requalify for her teaching certificate, while supporting her family. She did this by attending the University of Connecticut. Then my Uncle Harry, her brother, flew out from California and told her that he wanted her closer to him, so he could help her more.

She hired a moving truck to move our belongings, and packed us, my Granny Fox, and our cat Mittens - into a 1956 Pontiac, and started driving across the country to California. Somewhere in Texas we lost the cat. I was heartbroken, but my Mom talked to the motel owner. When we arrived in California, the cat was waiting for us. My Mom was a very special person.

California was a different place from the East coast, a culture shock. Mom got whatever substitute teaching jobs she could, but couldn't get a steady teaching job. Then up in Seattle, my Grandfather's house became available to us through inheritance, and we moved to the Pacific Northwest.

My mom taught at several schools, but seemed to feel most comfortable teaching in some of the toughest schools in Seattle, like Highpoint in West Seattle. She was never impressed or felt comfortable in the ritzy schools. My Mom worked hard all her life, and liked honest working people. When I was in high school we didn't have a lot of money, but my Mom bought me a car, a hotrod 1930 Model A Ford, that I had a lot of fun with. She sacrificed a lot to give things to her kids, being a working Mom back in the 60's, and I know it was a big job.

She took me camping once at Bonney Lake, somewhere south of Seattle. She had to work the next day, so she left me at the campsite. The next day I didn't catch any fish, and was sitting there late at night, cold and hungry. A car drove up - it was my Mom with a roasted chicken from a delicatessen. My mom always took care of me.

I joined the Navy in 1963, and she wrote me wherever I was stationed. It was lonely at times, being 3000 miles from home at age 18, but I always got letters from my mom. My last year in the service I was stationed on isolated duty at Adak, Alaska. I sent some of my money home because there was nowhere to spend it there anyway, and my mom never stopped talking about it; how I kept the family going with my pay checks. I never made more than $ 170 a month in the Navy, so it was really no big deal, but to my Mom, it was.

I got discharged from the Navy in Seattle; moved back in with her, and started college on the GI bill. This was in 1967, a time of racial tension in America. I asked her if I could have a black Navy friend of mine move in with us so he could have the same educational opportunity that I did, and she said yes without even thinking about it. My mom was color blind, and accepted all people of all races openly and warmly.

I got married during college and moved to Spokane. My Mom stayed in taught in Seattle. When we started our family, she began making the trip over the mountains to see her grandchildren. But instead of driving 70 MPH and making it in 5 hours, my Mom followed a different path.

She always liked to meander around, seeing where roads went, and what was over the top of the next hill. A trip to Spokane might take 2 days, and she'd tell me about the interesting author she met at Fishtrap, or the woman in Wenatchee who really knew how to make applesauce. She travelled with her dogs then, usually a welsh terrier, and a tent, and she seemed to know no fear of anyone or anyplace. My mom was an adventurer with a love of life. Like John Steinbeck, her favorite author, travelling with Charlie, my mom would take off and rediscover America.

When she retired from teaching she moved over here and bought a house near us. She turned her house into a grandchild's wonderland, with teddy bears, and cats and dogs, fruit trees and berries, secret hiding places, books, and trips to parks and zoos and movies and hamburger places. Our daughters had the most wonderful grandmother anyone could hope for. They both graduated with high honors from the University of Washington, and are succesful business women.

But my recollections of my mother are not just those of the traditional parent-child relationship. I lived with my mother recently for over 2 years, and got to know her as an adult friend. She told me many things in our friendship that a child might not hear from a parent.

Some of them brought tears to my eyes, like when she told me how at Catholic boarding school, she was always the child that seldom had vistors. She always dreamed that her father would come and rescue her, and whenever she smelled cigar smoke, she thought her Dad had come to take her away. But he never appeared.

Some of them made me see my mom in a completely different light. Once we saw a car behaving strangely, driving around in circles, and jerking and stalling. She told me it was a stolen car. Mom, how do you know that? , I asked. Because, she said, when I was 13 my girlfriend and I saw a car with the keys left in it, and we jumped in and drove it around ...just like that ... I could almost see my mom as teenage car thief ...

Some things she communicated without speaking, like when I would sit in the yard and play my guitar, she and her cat and her dog, the gray people as I came to call them, would come outside, and she would sit in her rocking chair with her pets and silently listen to me.

Sometime she might say "Bytes wants you to play that one again", or "Mehitabel wants to hear something classical.."

And she taught me to love and feed birds, and to appreciate their beauty and freedom. For God, in his infinite wisdom, makes some creatures fragile and weak, and some creatures and some people, have defects, which some might say makes them worthless and useless. But my mom taught me to love and to understand, and to see through such defects, and to show compassion and understanding.

One night I was sitting watching television. The door to her room opened, and she came out in her nightgown and went into the kitchen. Then she returned with a little debbie cupcake cake in her hand, with the wide-eyed look and mischevious smile of a young girl, and went back into her room.

I used to shop for her - do her Git List as she called it , and I wrote a show for her last year which aired on Raw Bytes on KPBX:

I'll read an excerpt from it, because she really enjoyed it :

How you write your grocery list may determine your computer programming ability ....

I have created hundreds of grocery lists, which make sense to me, but its other people's lists that drive me crazy,

I start on the right, and finish on the left. My list shows the exact item I need, by location, in logical location sequence. My grocery lists make perfect sense to me, and I think they are logical. It's other people lists that drive me nuts.

Take for example - my Mom's grocery lists, who I often shop for, because she's 85 years old. My mom gives me a grocery list based on no logic at all. I even try to sort it mentally into some logical order and fail. First item is on the extreme left, next item is 100 yards over to the right. 75 yards back to the cookies, then 1/4 mile back over to ice cream.

Then maybe a mile back to tomatoes. Then, of course, 2 miles across store to kleenex. By now I'm looking for a place to camp for the night, and continue on tomorrow after I'm rested.

But now comes the worst part, which reads "Those doohinkies I like ...". At this point if I were a computer, I would either have a hard disk crash, or display the message "that does not compute!".

Doohinkies are not anywhere in the generic store published list of available groceries.

I, a grown man, am not going to ask a clerk where the doohinkies are. And I will absolutely, positively not ask a stranger in a grocery store if they happened to pass the doohinkies somewhere in their travels.

Instead, I will stand here next to the kleenex, the last known logical item on the list, and try to determine exactly what a doohinkey is. I might be here for a long time.

In living with my Mom, I was amazed at her kindness and thoughtfulness, not just to her immediate family, but to her friends and to people she hardly knew. She was constantly baking and cooking and delivering things to people. She would clip articles out of papers and magazines she thought someone might appreciate. She loved to shop for bargains at goodwill and value village, and was all the time dropping off little gifts she thought someone might be able to use. My mom was a loving caring person who truly loved people.

My mom was an incredible woman who lived to her last days financially independent and with all her mental facilities. She did the crossword puzzle every day. She understood how to send internet mail, and dictated messages for me to send her friends. She subscribed to many magazines, and always was reading several books at once. She had been active in the United Nations local group and other organizations.

Grandma on the Computer 1999

It was her body, not her mind, that was going out on her, and disappointing her. She had many physical problems, with new ones emerging. Despite all the medication she was on, she kept having severe recurring problems.

She lived with the daily frustration of wanting to do much more than what her body had become capable of. My mom never wanted to leave her little house She said many times, "I'm an old lady and I've lived a full and rich life. There's nothing further that I want, and I hope to live in my house until I die. She absolutely never wanted to live in a rest home. Fortunately, God took her before things came close to even considering that.

But my mom could not have lived as long and enjoyably as she did without the love and support of many people in her life.

She had the love and respect of her daughter, Carol Joy Graham, her two grand daughters - Laura and Mollie - and her daughter in law - Carol Delaney .

She had the love of her brother Harry DeVaneaugh, who always protected and cared for her.

She had her group of school teacher friends, Jane and Jan and Emilyn, and they loved to get together and reminisce have fun.

And she lived in probably the best neighborhood with the best caring neighbors ever; Ruth Berglund who provided superb care for her at her worst moments, Fred and Dorothy Gaffner who watched out for her safety, Libby Avnet who was her friend and shared her love of pets, and dozens of other caring friends and neighbors who brought her comfort and love.

My Mom is gone from us, but she leaves a great legacy for us all to learn from.

For Christmas she said she didn't want anything, but finally agreed to letting us buy her Tom Brokaw's Book The Greatest Generation.

She was of that generation, and was one of its greatest. Her sharp eyes found a reference to a relative, James DeVaneaugh of North Carolina, which she had bookmarked.

She lived by a simple rule, work hard, do your best, live a simple life, love animals and people, and treat others as you would like to be treated yourself.

Comments by those in attendance remembering Caroline Delaney

Valentine's Day time to honor good friend

By Merri Lou Bailey Dobler

Monday will be a Valentine's Day of Kit Kat candy bars and a heart full of loving memories. In a very simple way, I will honor a woman named Caroline who recently died. Her kindness meant a lot to me.

Caroline was my family's baby sitter during a time when I was trying to juggle many things in my life and not succeeding very well. She would come take care of my children so I could work, and she never doubted for a minute that it was her job to sit me down and give me advice culled from her years of life experiences. I always listened to her stories and carried their messages with me.

Caroline, who was in her 80's when she died; continued to do those extra things for my family even after she stopped baby-sitting. She would leave bags of goodies on our screen door handle; when my girls came home from school they eagerly opened the bags, finding Kit Kat bars and other sweets she knew we liked. Caroline always remembered us on holidays, too, bringing pumpkin-decorated flashlights for Halloween or socks with red hearts for Valentine's Day.

She helped me navigate some of life's twists and turns and my heart is full of gratitude and appreciation for all she did for me.

And so, on this Valentine's Day, I will put a Kit Kat in each of my family's lunch bags and tuck one in my purse, too. It will be a most sweet reminder that a very generous, kind-hearted woman still smiles on us all and wishes us the best in our lives.

Merri Lou Bailey Dobler is a registered dietitian and writes a weekly column for The Spokesman Review. This article appeared on 2/9, 2000.

Invitation to reception at Carol Delaney's house and girls

Final prayer by Pastor John Shaeffer.

Final Song - Tramp on the Street

I'd like you all to join me in my favorite hymn - called Tramp on the Street. It's the story of the blind beggar Lazarus, from the bible, and the morale of the story is - treat others as you would like to be treated yourself.

Tramp On The Street

Click here to Listen to Tramp on the Street played by Frank Delaney

( 1st verse)

Only a tramp was, Lazarus that day, he who lay down by, the rich man's gate,

he begged for some bread from, the rich man to eat, but they left him to die like, a tramp on the street.

CHORUS

He was some mother's darlin', he was some mother's son,

once he was fair, Lord, and once he was young,

some mother rocked him, her baby to sleep,

but they left him to die like, like a tramp on the street.

(2nd verse)

If Jesus should come and, (knock) knock on your door,

begging for bread and, some food from your stores,

would you deny him, and turn him away,

then God would deny you, on that great judgement day.

( 3rd verse)

Jesus he died on, Calvary's tree, he shed his life's blood for, for you and for me,

they pierced his hands and, his side and his feet,

and they left him to die like, like a tramp on the street.

My Grandfather's Radio

I bought my daughter a radio for Christmas, except kids don't call them radios today. I guess they're boom boxes or ghetto blasters. It's got AM/FM, dual tape decks, lots of black plastic and chrome knobs,and speakers that you can take off and place about 15 feet apart so you can break dance while you're waiting for the bus. I read the manual and tried out all the features, and thought it was pretty nifty, until I remembered my Grandfather's radio downstairs in the basement.

I turned on the light in the corner where its sat unused for many years. Nothing lit up when I pressed the off/on button. Unplugged, of course. The cord is stiff, and almost broken in places, but I heard the familiar humm when I plugged it in. You know, I haven't listened to this since college.

It's a Philco, and it's big, about 4 feet by 3 feet, and it probably weighs close to a hundred pounds. Really fine wood, with some inlay work. 9 vertical wood slats protect the speaker cabinet, which is covered with a handsome mat material. The control panel has buttons that you push for automatic frequency selection, and there's the call letters of 8 Seattle radio stations, one for each button, some still broadcasting today, others long forgotten. 2 wheels on the left let you adjust the tone and the volume. There's 2 on the right also. One for tuning, and one for the 4 Broadcast band selections, regular broadcast, police, and 2 overseas bands. The dial panel is real glass, with the frequencies calibrated , and the names of foreign countries written at different places on the bands; Geneva, Rome, London, Berlin, Japan, South America. My grandfather had a trading post in Ruby, Alaska, and strung the first telegraph lines in the territory. He bought this radio when he moved down to Seattle in 1940.

I pulled it away from the wall, and turned it, so I could look in the back. It has a directional loop aerial that you can turn by hand for better reception. A round cardboard sign built into the aerial has a picture of the globe with the Philco name on it. American and Overseas Aerial System. Yellowed stickers inside reveal the story. Philco. Model 41‑295. This was inspected by an American craftsman of the day and judged good enough to ship. There's a tag hanging from the huge 15 inch speaker. It's the inventory tag from the store where my grandfather bought it, and it has his name on it. Tom De Vane. Advertising slogans that seem strangely out of place today. "Built for television sound and FM - the wireless way !" "A unit of the Philco. Look for this emblem in your neighborhood."

This is powered by early electronics and a mechanical labyrinth of pulleys, wires, wheels, sliders and levers. There's a schematic that shows all the tubes. And these are real tubes, all made in the USA, by Philco and a company called National Electric, that has a lightning bolt going through the name. They light up, and you can put your hands up to them for warmth. You can turn all the lights off in the room, and this radio illuminates with its own soft glow, and the powerful deep sound soothes you as you explore the airwaves .................

From another time of radio, this is Frank Delaney

( Aired on KPBX-FM 91.1 as a Short Feature on Radio History 1989)

Web Page in loving Memory of my Mother  by Frank Delaney  Email: frank@mtamicro.com