Retta Davis Memorial Service

Front Page of Program had a brief biography.

Retta was born and raised in Denver, Colorado to Frank and Una. Her father pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Minor League team and then worked and pitched for Westinghouse and the Public Service Co. in Denver. During the Great Depression his pitching helped land the job with PSC. Her mother was an active Christian Scientist. Her maternal grandfather Edwin was instrumental in her early life. He had been the County Superintendent of Schools in Independence, Iowa, for years before moving to Denver. He encouraged her academic studies, lovingly kidding her that if she wasn’t a Phi Beta Kappa when she graduated college he would come back from Hell and haunt her. He started her lifelong love for Shakespeare, crossword puzzles, card games and learning.

She went to the University of Colorado. She did graduate Phi Beta Kappa and President Dr. Norlin said she was the exemplification of what a Phi Beta Kappa should be - “someone who sought wisdom, respected knowledge, and worked for the welfare of those who needed help.” She was a proud Kappa Kappa Gamma. She won a Panhellenic national contest with her essay, “Must We Continue to Grant Free Speech to Those Who Use It In Order to Destroy It?” She was awarded a trip to the New York World’s Fair in 1939 where she was Queen for a day and hosted the suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt. She went to Washington, D.C. as an intern. There she met her fellow intern Aubrey. They were married in May, 1941.

After WWII, Retta and Aubrey moved to Seattle and Mercer Island where they raised four children: Judy, Becky, Peter and Trisha. Retta was a Girl Scout leader for ten years, and worked on many political campaigns. In the late 1950’s, after Aubrey started Gaco with Hugh Mitchell, she became an elementary school teacher to supplement the family’s college fund. Starting in 1960 she taught at Mercer Crest and West Mercer Elementary Schools for 23 years. On retirement, she volunteered at the Science Center and the Aquarium to teach about seashore invertebrates at the tide pool touch tanks. From the mid-1990s she volunteered at the Salvation Army where she helped price the valuable and rare books for sale.

She was a sage and a philosopher. In a conversation about religious beliefs she recently said “The true message of Jesus was not about the afterlife, but how to live life." Retta lived her life by the Golden Rule. She could see the good in almost anyone, except Richard Nixon. She was forever young. She owned one of the first Apple Macintosh computers and the original Nintendo Game Boy. She even used Skype to have a video chat with Trisha a few weeks before she died. After sorrows in her life, soon she was back on her feet, curious and busy. Moping around was not part of her DNA – there was too much to do.

Above all she loved her husband, Aubrey, her children and grandchildren. Her family was the most important part of her life. So in celebrating her memory we celebrate the love of family.
Henrietta Davis
Memorial Service
East Shore Unitarian Church
12700 SE 32nd St., Bellevue, WA 98005
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Piano by Bob Kechley

The service:  Words spoken and service led by Eric unless otherwise noted.


PRELUDE – 30 minutes of classical music

Tolling of the Bell --- Anthony

Piano: Intermezzo, by Heinz Provost – Theme song to the movie Intermezzo: A Love Story, 1939

Reading – adapted from Israel Zangwill

Come, come into the circle of love and justice
Come into the community of mercy, holiness, and health
Come and you shall know peace and joy.

WELCOME -Eric

I would like to welcome you all. On behalf of the love of Retta’s life, Aubrey, the children she cherished so much, Judy, Peter, Becky and Trisha, I really want to thank you all for being here and helping us celebrate this wonderful woman.
I have a little housekeeping business before we start. Following the service there will be a reception in Spring Hall, around the traffic circle in the far building. You are all welcome to join us. If you haven’t already, please sign the guest book and leave your name address and phone number, that way if Aubrey needs to contact you about some important transportation issue or health care issue, he can do that. Finally I would like to bring your attention to the poem on the final page of the program. This poem has a very special meaning for us in the family since it was specifically chosen by Henrietta for her memorial service. The poet and Henrietta both grew up in Denver and his imagery flows with the images of her youth. Vic will have more on the poem at the closing. So now I would like to invite the grandchildren up for the candle lighting ceremony

Candle Ceremony by the Grandchildren
{All eight grandchildren took to the stage and held hands. On a table in front of them was a large, burning white candle surrounded by 8 smaller unlit candles. The grandchildren then took turns lighting one of eight candles from the large central candle.}

Music: Memories from Cats, Original Cast CD during the candle lighting service.

Blessing

Whenever the Davis family gathers for a meal we start with a Blessing from the Pulitzer Prize winning play You Can’t Take it With You, a play about an eccentric family whose lives are not centered on the acquisition of fame or wealth, but rather a family centered on love and acceptance of each other.
So if you will all stand. Look at the program. This is a call and response. Your role is to say “We have our health and the rest is up to you.” Now what I would like you to do is to put your programs down, and now comes the hard part, because you have to remember that. Now hold hands, as we would all hold hands around the table and Retta would lead the blessing.

Call: “Well sir, here we are together again”
Response: “We have our health, and the rest is up to you.”

Terrific, thank you.

Please be seated.

Reflections

For our memorial service we have decided to tell Retta’s life by choosing 5 facets to reflect upon. This means there will be much we leave out. We will not talk about her love for the family genealogy, a love she shared with Judy, her eldest daughter. So if you would like to know how the family is related to Martha Carrier, one of the women condemned to death as a witch at the Salem witch trials, talk to Judy at the reception.

What we will focus on are our memories of Retta as a Student and Teacher, Retta as a Political Activist. Retta as the lifelong fan of baseball. Retta as the core of the family, the heart of the family, the wife, mother and grandmother. Retta as the ultimate volunteer. The key to her longevity, many of you will want to pay attention to that section. She was the family sage, and a lover of Shakespeare, and we will talk about that too.

Student and Teacher

So that is a good list. Let’s begin. Retta was computer savvy and left a very good digital record of her life, so parts of the service will be in her own words.
We will begin her biography with a reading about her childhood.

In her own words:

“When I was over 50 I learned that my tendons are attached differently from the rest of the human race. This accounted for the fact that until I was seven or eight I couldn’t hold a pencil or crayon without dropping them. I walked funny and ran even funnier.”

“Grandpa Lillie visited the first grade classroom in Wheatridge and realized that I’d never be able to do the regular curriculum. So when I was five he and Grandma taught me how to read. Then when it came time to enter school, he made a deal with the first grade teacher that I could read and talk but didn’t have to do any pencil or crayon work except just the very minimum. I wasn’t to be penalized for my separate program. By third grade I had pretty well mastered holding a pencil, so when my parents decided to buy their own home, I could transfer to the Denver schools and do the work. But Grandpa Lillie, he made it possible for me to survive until I could do the work.”

So Grandpa, loved, nurtured and cultivated the young awkward girl, giving her the time to blossom. An important lesson in her life.

We skip ahead some 50 years, and now there is Retta the teacher of a young awkward student in her 3rd and 4th grade class, Kelly Goto. Kelly so admired Retta, that years later she gathered together friends from elementary school and threw Retta a party for her 85th Birthday.

This is what she wrote in the Memory Book of the party:

“Twenty-four years ago I was a student in your 3rd and 4th grade classes. I learned to make stone soup ( I brought giant carrots from my grandma’s garden.) I learned about penmanship and wrote an essay “What it means to be an American”. I was in a play called “The Gold Watch”, and learned what it meant to be a Japanese-American, an important lesson. I made my first stop-animation movie, called “Birth of a Crane.”
“You taught me to believe in myself, to be creative, to think about our country, to think about our environment- but most of all you taught me to care about learning. Thank-you for a lifetime of inspiration.”

Piano: Roll on Columbia Roll On by Woody Guthrie– Started when I finished. The first stanza of the song was played while Brenna came up and stood by my side.

Political Activist and Baseball Fan

All her life Retta was politically active. We will begin with a reading by her granddaughter, Brenna.

Reading from The Courage to Belong, by William Ernest Hosting.

“There is no choice but to immerse oneself in the stream of history,
Accept one’s time location.
Breath in, with shared memories and hopes, the contamination of tradition.
Become defined as the person of this cause, this party, this emergency.
Failure to accept responsibility, refusal to take a stand on vital issues,
Timid rejection of the tides of a true belonging,
These are denials of life, in effect they are deeds of death.
To understand the times in which we live,
To add our weight to the scales on the side of brotherhood and equality within valid differences
This is life with shape and character
The one eternity worth having.”

Henrietta’s political activism in her own words:

“When I was in college at the University of Colorado, I found a problem. My friend from high school, Emily, was a black. She had to go 40 miles to Denver over what was then a dangerous 2 lane road to get a haircut. I found out that the Barber’s Union was opposed to blacks being in their shops. I found out that the barbers didn’t know how to cut black hair. I found out that State Law forbid discrimination. I asked to attend a Barber’s Union meeting to get more information. And now the truth comes out. President Dr. Norlin called me in his office. He said he knew I was trying to get the Barber’s Union to change and asked if I wanted his help. That made all the difference. He had the Dean of the Law School bring a mock court case to try the Barbers Union for violation of a state law. He got the Union to bring barbers from Denver to Boulder to teach the barbers how to cut black hair. I arranged for every black to have 3 or 4 partners to go with them and all get haircuts-filling the barber’s chairs so it wouldn’t look like having blacks had scared away regular customers away.”

She was a person who cared about the details.

Baseball linked together two of Retta’s loves, her love of country and her love of family. She was lucky to have such a wonderful son, Peter, who arranged for the season tickets to the Mariners, and the family trips to Arizona for Mariner Spring Training. She was also lucky to have some grandchildren who were pretty good ball players in their own right, and she just loved going to little league games with Aubrey. I remember being in the stands with her for one of Anthony’s games, and Pete was coaching and Anthony’s pitching and she is keeping score and it was so much fun for all of us.

In her own words, this is something she wrote when she was about 85 years old:

“I am most buoyantly a part of the United States of America when I rise with 50,000 other baseball fans to mouth the Star Spangled Banner while an operatic star thrillingly fills the air with our national anthem. I go back in memory 80 years and I live again standing and singing while I watched my father warm up in the bull pen, or as I stood hand in hand with my father and mother and often my grandfather, or as I stood and sang with my husband and our four children. Now as we stand, sing, and salute the flag with our grandchildren I am moved to tears with wonder.”

So, if we will all rise for a 7th inning stretch in her honor. We are going to sing together Take me out to the Ball Game. And if you don’t know the words I can only chide you with one of Pete’s expressions, “Come on, get with the program here”.

Piano: Take me out to the ball game –played with gusto

"Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack,
I don't care if I never get back,
For its root, root, root for the Mariners,
If they don't win it's a shame.
For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out,
At the old ball game."

Wife, Mother and Grandmother

Let’s start at the very beginning. How Aubrey and Retta met. Now you know that Retta was politically activite in college, but that activism almost doomed her relationship with Aubrey. So what happened.

In the Fall of 1939 she arrives in Washington D.C. as a government intern. Aubrey was the housing chair for her group. He had written a very interesting letter to the incoming interns telling them about life in Washington and the housing situation. The letter included the charge that they prove those wrong who claim that “Youth is wasted on the young”. She really looked forward to meeting him. Then, at their first meeting at a party he casually turned to her and asks her why, in the recent election, she had lost Colorado to the Republicans. She took serious offense at this question since during the summer she had worked tirelessly for John Carroll who was elected even though he was in Italy on some defense assignment and didn’t come home to campaign. It took until spring after a Quaker meeting that they both attended for them to walk home together and talk seriously. They were married a few weeks later in May of 1941 and continued their conversation for 67 years.

Well a man couldn’t have been blessed with a better wife. During the hard times and good times they were always a team. From the start to the end, they both knew how lucky they were to have each other, and they made sure each other knew it. She so admired Aubrey and was so devoted. They were linked so tightly together that they became known as Aubrietta.

So I say, from the bottom of my heart, Wow, Aubrey, were you lucky.

So how about a few “Amens” for that thought.

Becky and some of the grandkids have joined me on the stage to share some of their memories and thoughts.

Introduction to this section -Sarah

The poet William Wordsworth would often write about past experiences in his life which he called spots of time. Spots of time were those moments in one’s life that continue to resonate with new meanings many years after the events themselves. Wordsworth writes, “There are in our existence spots of time which with distinct preeminence retain a renovating virtue whence our minds are nourished and invisibly repaired.” We are each going to relate to you some spots of time and some reflections on times we have had with Grandma Retta that have been formative in our lives and that will live on forever in our hearts.

Just us kids -Becky

So during my spots in time Dad is on a business trip and the fun could begin because it was ‘just us kids’. Instantly dinner did not have to be when Dad got home, it could be whenever we wanted.

Usually what happened was we would wait for Dad for dinner. Mom would put a salad on the table in the evening before Dad got home. We would nibble on it while she wasn’t looking. She would catch us and say “Save some for dinner.” Eventually Dad got home and then we could sit down and eat from our preauthorized color plates. Judy had maroon, and I had light green, Pete had blue and Trish had dark green. We would hear about Dad’s day. Of course it was very interesting and exciting to hear about what was going on at Group Health, Gaco or Transportation.

But in a ‘just us kids’ evening dinner could be anytime. We could have any menu. We could eat on any plate. Our favorite was to go out for a ‘just us kids’ dinner which would be a 19 cent hamburger. I assure you this hamburger was the best hamburger in the world even though the bun was stale, but the meat patty was tasteless, and the ketchup was overwhelming because it was part of a ‘just us kids’ adventure with Mom.

Now sometimes we got to go with Dad on a business trip. That was what was called a Davis family vacation. We hit the highlights. We went wherever there was a Gaco coated dam or a Gaco coated roof- like China lake, which is in the middle of the California desert where it is 108 at night and there are dead lizards in the pool. If you go swimming after 6 AM you boil. But it did not matter where we were, because Dad had the car. We were in a motel, not a hotel, motel room. Boring? Absolutely not, because it was just us kids. Mom always had in her suitcase cheese and crackers, yummy snacks and cards. We had wicked ‘Dirty 8’ tournaments and group solitaire.

Now ‘just us kids’ was not a single generational event. When I had children a ‘just us kids’ event was when Sarah, Jessica, Amy and I would go over Snoqualmie Pass from Yakima where Vic was home working, of course, like the guy is suppose to do, and we were going to have a ‘just us kids’ with Grandma. Mom’s rule was ‘An adventure a day’! Oh my gosh, the adventures we had. All the normal ones, the aquarium and things like that. But I remember one in particular where the kids were babes in arms and toddlers. We went on a submarine. We climbed up and down the vertical ladders. We went through the narrow halls. We talked to the sailors about nuclear power. With babes in arms and toddlers at our feet, we had such a good time.

So I do not know if the real kids were having as much fun, but this kid loved the ‘just us kids’ day.

Grandma -Sarah

Grandma Retta had a limitless capacity to take a genuine and passionate interest in her grandchildren. Throughout the stages of our childhood, she went to any measure to meet us where we were in life. I remember one summer when I was visiting Mercer Island I lamented to Grandma that everyone in my class knew how to tie their shoes except for me. I explained that the teacher told me that you had to take one loop which was the tree, and another loop which was the rabbit, and the rabbit circled the tree, and then I was lost. Then she said, “That is a silly way to tie your shoes. You simply take one string and it’s a loop, and one string and it’s a loop, and tie it together.” I have been tying my shoes that way ever since.

She was also the ring leader of our childhood games. When we were little one of the highlights of visiting Grandma and Grandpa was the hot tub. Us cousins would all pile into the hot tub and Grandma had a game where she would turn on the jets and toss colored wash clothes into the hot tub. She would hold up the wash clothes and declare that these were jelly fish. We would scream, she would toss them in, and the jets would swirl them around and we would run around and splash. She sat there for hours throwing washcloths in.

When we became teenagers and adults were not cool, Grandma was the one adult that defied that rule. She was the first person to buy a Nintendo Gameboy of anyone I ever knew. When I wanted to pierce my upper ear my mother was horrified. Grandma stepped in and she found the middle ground. She took me to a local Seattle jeweler and had an ear cuff made just for me.

Her love for each of her grandchildren, with each of their unique characteristics was exemplified by the thirteenth birthday parties she would throw for each of us. She would take a small tree, spray paint it our favorite color and hang 13 special gifts.

Even in our adult years her love and acceptance has extended to her grandchildren-in-laws. I remember vividly when my husband John, who I had been dating for only three months, came to Seattle to meet my Grandparents. When I discovered Grandma and John on the deck discussing birds of the northwest, I knew he was a keeper.

Whatever phase of life we have been in, she has stepped into our world and loved and accepted us. Encouraged us to be ourselves and be the best we can be.

Grandma – Amy

One particularly telling moment I had with my Grandma was when I decided to visit her at the Salvation Army where she volunteered pricing books. Instead of going to the front part of the Salvation Army store we went back to the warehouse. Me and my grandma navigated through these huge piles of furniture and lifting machinery and headed back to this dark, dingy corner where this man, this huge twenty-something guy, was just lifting these huge boxes of books like they were nothing. As she approached he stopped and patiently waited for what had obviously become this ritual exchange between the two of them. She would say, “Hi ho”, and he would say, “Good morning Mrs. Davis.” She would stoop over and pick a book out of the pile. She picked up this new John Grisham book. Noticing that it was in a seemingly unused condition she smiled approvingly and say, “Oh goody”.

She explained later that the man had just got out of prison and was employed by the Salvation Army’s rehabilitation program, like pretty much everyone else there except my 85 year old grandma. One morning when I was envisioning going to work with her I envisioned all these other grandmothers just like my own, wearing aprons, talking about bird species, maybe doing that morning’s crossword puzzle, but not being with this unlikely crew of coworkers. And not the grace with which she assumed their respect and interest.

I accompanied her to the Salvation Army a couple of more times that summer. I got to know the people there, and helped her slowly go through the boxes of books. I learned a lot about the indicators of a book’s worth-whether it was a first edition, damaged or written on. I learned even more about the history of little Golden books. Most importantly I saw something to aspire to. To be a woman who so internalized the idea of service that I would do it not as an obligation, but with grace and simply how to live a life.

Grandma – Jessica

The summer after my freshman year of college my sister Sarah and I decided to spend the summer together away from the protective watch of our parents. What better place to do that then to live at our Grandparents house on Mercer Island and work at Gaco, the family business. We had a ball that summer, exploring Seattle and enjoying sister time together.

But one of the most special parts of the experience was the opportunity to spend so much time with Grandma and Grandpa. I had always known that my Grandma was an incredible person. She was the smartest person I knew. Whenever I couldn’t figure out the answer to a homework problem and I had exhausted the usually sources, my parents and the Encyclopedia Britannica, I would always call Grandma. She would certainly know the answer.

She was a kid at heart as you heard about from Sarah. She devoted her life to service as you heard about from Amy. But I had not known a lot about her life before us grandkids came on the scene. Grandma was not the sort of person to brag about her accomplishments and draw attention to herself. But every night that summer we sat for hours around the dinner table and Grandma and Grandpa would answer our questions and tell us stories from their lives. I had never known that Grandma had led the campaign, as you heard about earlier, for African Americans to be allowed to have their haircut in Boulder, Colorado. I did not know that she had been pen pals with Byron White, the Supreme Court justice.

Her legacy of challenging herself and helping others is something I aspire to everyday in my career as a physician. She encouraged me so much during the last few years as I have been in medical school and residency. Just last Christmas I had to be on call and work over the holidays. So she sent me the following email.

"While I sip my morning tea I read my email. There I learned that you are going to be alone for Christmas. Please know in your heart that you are never alone. My thoughts and love are always with you. If you feel the need to talk anytime over the holidays just give us a ring and reverse the charges. Do keep in my mind that we are so proud of you and all that you do. I know that you will brighten the days of all the lonely patients. Much love, HHD"

Grandma – Aubrey

I am offering more of a reflection on Grandma.

In my religion class this quarter we had a discussion on saints and what sainthood meant. We decided that sainthood fundamentally came down to a person who was a role model for their community. So in my context at Santa Clara, a Catholic saint is someone who is a role model to the Catholic community. In the assignment I was finishing late one night I expanded upon this idea and realized that a saint doesn’t have to have a religious context, nor does the community really have to be that large that the person affects. Really a saint could just reach from a person to a person. Right after I finished the paper I immediately thought of Grandma and how she was a saint to me. She’s my saint of crosswords, she is my saint of curiosity, she is my saint of wisdom and she is my saint of grandmas. Answer yourself how she is a saint for you, and remember her for that. I know I will.

Grandma – Stephen

As you have heard, Grandma had the very special ability to spread her love and warmth to those around her. At family dinners or when I would go to Grandma and Grandpa’s house for lunch she would say things like, “Well, I think that is just wonderful”, and “We are so proud of you.” To know that one is loved is a gift and in that regard, grandma was my Santa Claus. We will all miss her very dearly.

Piano: Wind beneath my wings played while Trisha and Patrick come up to the podium and the other speakers except Stephen go back to their seats.

A Volunteer and Keeping Busy

So how did she live so long, she kept busy. Doing crossword puzzles was one of the keys. The day before she died she had completed the daily puzzle, and was in the middle of the Sunday NYT puzzle. But there was more than doing puzzles.

When she was 82 Stephen had a school assignment to interview his grandmother. One of the questions he asked was “What do you do in your spare time?”

In her own words:

“I don’t have any spare time. I wish I did. However, with my work which consists of physical exercises, mental exercises (crossword puzzles), keeping up on the interesting books and newspapers, listening to NPR, watching public television, working at the Aquarium, working at the Salvation Army, keeping up the house, keeping Aubrey and me fed and well, and most important attending grandchildren’s ball games and activities and helping with home work. I wish I did have time. I’d learn French.”

So, invertebrates was one of Retta’s passions, and her youngest daughter Trisha will share a memory.

Invertebrates – Trisha

My Mom was always interested in the natural world. Even though she grew up in Colorado far from the ocean, at least by the time I showed up, she had a great interest in the life in and around the Puget Sound.

Our friends, the Harlows and the Howells owned a cabin in the San Juan Islands. They called it Gemini. Whenever we went there we spent hours on the beach tromping through the tide pools looking at all the sea life. We would stick our fingers into the sea anemones and watch them pull all their tentacles in as they tried to capture us for their next meal. I still remember watching tiny jelly fish being launched into the world from their stalk. One at a time they detached and drifted off into the world. Just like us kids, launched into our lives from the shores of Puget Sound by our mother’s love.

My Mom took us to the tide pools, she took the Girl Scouts to the tide pools, she took my friends to the tide pools. She also took her students to the tide pools.
One year when all the sixth graders went on their field trip to the shore, Mom was asked to present lessons on sea life, especially the invertebrates. Mom launched into a full study of invertebrates that continued for the rest of her life. She was a full believer in life-long learning!

When she retired from teaching school, she began 2 decades of volunteering first at the Science Center then at the Aquarium. At the Aquarium, she taught, of course, about invertebrates. She was a docent at the touch tank, where visitors could come and hold the slimy sea cucumber or brittle star fish. She would encourage their curiosity just as she had done with us when we were kids. One of her favorite animals were the octopuses. She would often tell Eric and me stories about the escapades of the octopuses. One year the octopuses started to mate and Mom called us up. We rushed down to the Aquarium so we wouldn’t miss it.

Along the way, my Mom and Dad bought property on south Puget Sound and built their own beach house. We all laughed about how we called the place “The Cape” as if we were living in the Hamptons and going out to our “summer place.” Mom and I kept an inventory of the animals on the beach. Picnopodia , the Pisaster brevospinus, the beaded anemones, the moon snail egg casings, shrimp that bite and of course the lovely geoducks. At low tides she would admonish me to put the Pisasters star fish back in the water because they were so easily sunburned. I tried but boy there were a lot of them!

The best of all were the piddock clams. We discovered them on one of our early explorations of the bay, an entire colony, borrowed into the tilted sandstone layers. My Mom was thrilled to have these unusual clams right there on our beach. To her they were a treasure beyond belief. In her later years, she no longer ventured on the beach. But when we came back from our walks, she would always ask, “How are the piddock clams?”

Piano: One refrain of Surrounded by Acres of Clams, a Northwest folksong was played.

Scholar

Shakespeare was an important part of Retta’s life. During the Depression most of her extended family lived with her Grandpa Lillie and one of the real treats was Grandpa Lillie reading Shakespeare, and having the family take parts in the play. Hamlet said “The play’s the thing”, but for Aubrey and Retta the plays they took their family to were only half “the thing”. The other half was sitting around at home afterwards, with bowls of ice cream, discussing the performance.

We are glad to have Edward Call, a dear friend of the family to share some memories and read a passage.

Retta- Ed Call

I really feel like an intruder. To carry on that image of “You can’t take it with you”, you may remember a funny little man called Mr. DePinna, who comes in and makes firecrackers with Mr. Sycamore. I am sort of the Mr. DePinna of the family.

Peter and I worked in several theaters around the country and he took me down to the Cape, as Trish reminded us of their house on the sound. There is a parallel I suppose, you know, an unusual family and so forth, but there is a great difference the Davises and the Sycamores. For one thing they are all ferociously bright and very competitive. Can you imagine a normal person being thrust into this environment?

One of the first evenings I was there I was sitting after dinner across the table from Trish. She had a pack of cards and was playing solitaire. I happened to see there was another pack available. I said to her, “Trish, do you ever play double solitaire?” I illuminated some inner fire. She turned into this Argus-eyed many handed creature who moved across that table top with amazing and utterly intimidating speed. She beat my brains out, of course, and I tried from that time on, maybe once or twice, to equal her, but then realized it was impossible and we never played double solitaire since.

You know, hearing all these wonderful stories, you know, I knew Retta, but I didn’t know her as a member of her family, but I knew them quite well, but hearing all these stories, didn’t it make you want to be Retta’s grandson or daughter.

I fell in love her. She was the one normal with all these over bright, competitive types I was dealing with. She always made me feel at home.

We had two strong bonds, two points of contact really. One was teaching, which I was starting to do. I organized a workshop for High School kids and Shakespeare.

I use to love to hear her stories about teaching. She would talk about how impatient she was with this idea of English as a second language and having to teach people who don’t speak English and make special classes. She told what she did. When someone from Cambodia came into her classroom she simply sat them down next to the brightest kid in the class. Told the bright one to work with the Cambodian and in six months they were jabbering away in English. One didn’t need all this separate instruction. She told me once about one enchanted time when a Japanese girl came into the class. Some of the foreign students had some basic knowledge of English, but this girl did not know word one. So she decided to take the class for a walk. They went out of the school and started walking through the community. One kid would go up to the Japanese girl and take her to a large tall object and say. “Tree, Tree”. Then the whole class would say, “Tree, Tree.” Then the Japanese girl would say, “Tree, tree.” So the language instruction began as a game.

So the other contact was Shakespeare. I am taking up too much time here. So I will just read.

[From The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1, Prospero]

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

But be content your immortality is assured
For those you bore will carry on your name
And those you taught will carry on your fame.

Closing Words

Finally let me introduce Vic Pentz for the closing words.

Closing Words- Vic Pentz

Following Becky’s and my wedding in this sanctuary 38 years ago Becky said to me, “ My parents speak with one voice. They may disagree, but we never see it. You and I, like mom and dad, need to be a united front. I said, yes. We will be a united front. We’d say that to each other sometimes, united front, you and me, Becky and Vic. And then we had our first child.... “Your father said you could stay up how late????” I said, “Becky what about the united front?” She said, “This is harder than I thought.” We tried and tried. And finally said, “How did they ever do it?”

Imagine the challenge of building your marriage in the shadow of the greatest marriage you’ve ever seen. The Davises 67 year marriage is even a brand. You’ve heard of Microsoft and Coke. In marriage it’s Aubrietta. Aubrey and Retta combined. Even that didn’t work for us. Somehow Vicbecca did not compare. Aubrietta was their email. As a family we’d go off on weekends wearing T shirts that said, “A U B R I E T T A.”

What Rainier is to this region, Mount Aubrietta has been in our lives as a family. As awesome and beautiful as unshakable and enduring. And that’s our problem. How do we say goodbye? What do we have to cling to that death cannot touch?

Retta chose a beautiful poem on the back of the program that asks the question,

"What keeps on moving if your body stops?”

It too speaks of the mountains.

“See how the moon goes down behind those mountains.
The hills with every waning moon are lower.
They cannot last. They go where we are going.
They wear away to feed our lips with words.
The moon’s a sand lily petal floating down
Behind the blue wall of the Rocky Mountains.
I see you as a woman on that wall.
Stepping down crumbled distances forever.
One terrace of a mountain at a time.
One terrace of a prairie at a time,
Until you join your kinsmen at the sea.”

In a similar vein the Psalmist says, “I shall not fear though the earth should quake and the mountain be cast into the depths of the sea.”

What do we have to cling to after our mountain has been cast into the depths of the sea? Let’s embrace the things we have left.....

One of those things we can hold on to is memories. We can go back and walk down long corridors where we relive precious moments with Retta. In fact we in this room are bound together in an almost sacramental sense by the memories we share. Other people will see a crossword puzzle and think nothing about it. We will see Retta in her in her pose of pondering, pencil in hand. Others will stroll along the beach and walk right past a tide pool. For the rest of our lives when we walk by a tide pool we’ll see Retta reverently lifting up a sea star and showing a child how to tell a male from a female. Others will see a woman on in years in her nineties and assume she hit her peak thirty years ago and we’ll chuckle and shake our heads in astonished remembrance of Retta whose mind and heart dazzled ‘til the day she died. Others will hear a word or phrase and not blink an eye. The very same word or turn of phrase or tone of voice will flood our mind with recollections of Retta.

Do not be shy about telling us in the Davis family your stories of Retta. We can’t get enough of them. If a tear comes to our eye, just know that it hurts good.

Precious memories are things we can hold on to that not even death can touch.

Along with the memories death can never touch neither can death touch the good that Retta did in this world. Her life of love lives on. And that’s where we come in. There’s a scene in the gospels where on the Mount of Olives Jesus disappears from the sight of the disciples. The disciples then descend the mountain and into the city of Jerusalem and go about as best they can doing the things Jesus would do if he were there. In the same way, it’s been said, we can be “ambassadors for the departed.” Imagine what a better place Seattle and the world would be if we went out of here as ambassadors of Retta Davis doing the things Retta would do if she were here. You can love Retta by being devoted in ten foot high capital letters to your spouse and family. You can love Retta by throwing away your cliff notes and reading real Shakespeare. You can love Retta by declaring war on all arrogant abuses of power and those who commit them. You can love Retta by teaching a child not only to read but to love the process of learning with a white hot passion. You can love Retta by facing the physical travails of life by learning more about them than your doctor and handling each one with equal parts guts, grace and humor.

Someone has said, “The secret of happiness is to make other people feel that they are the cause of it.” No one I’ve ever met in my entire life could make other people feel like they were the cause of her happiness like Retta. You’d walk into the room, she’d see you and she’d throw her hands up in the air and say, “Welcome!” It was the same gesture she’d make when she was a Safeco Field and a Mariner hit a home run. She made you feel ten feet tall. Which is why self esteem is not a problem for her children or grandchildren.

Having received the gift of Retta Davis into our lives what a challenge we face now to go out and become that gift in the lives of others.

Finally, the third gift Retta gave us that death cannot touch is she left behind no unfinished business. There’s a tendency many people have to live tentatively, and hold back and put off and pave their lives with “I meant to do that’s.” Not Retta. Retta sucked the marrow out of each moment. She went all out –petal to the metal--for 92 years. Her last year she made it to each of Aubrietta traditional trips – Mariner spring training and the Ashland Shakespeare Festival. She even finished the NYT crossword puzzle the day before she died. She left nothing undone, no words unsaid, no gifts ungiven- and what a ride she gave us!!!!!

And now her life is complete and what a blessings we’ve had of walking with her on her earthly journey.

Would you stand with me and recite the words of the benediction.

If, here, you have found freedom,
Take it with you into the world.
If you have found comfort,
Go and share it with others.
If you have dreamed dreams, help one another,
That they may come true!
If you have known love,
Give some back
To a bruised and hurting world.
Go in Peace

Postlude

Piano: So long, Farewell, from The Sound of Music, by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
So long, it’s been good to know you, by Woody Guthrie