October 13 – “End of an era? … Alice Whiteman”

We received some pretty shocking news yesterday.  Our dear friend and neighbor, Alice Whiteman, died.  It still sounds strange just to say it out loud, and I have had occasion to do just that several times now.  The first time was when I told Chris.  She had been on the phone with her brother for about an hour.  I asked her to sit down while she shared parts of that conversation with me, knowing that what I had to tell her would be quite a shock.  And so it was.  And it was with the two neighbors we told later in the day.  It was just difficult for all of us to grasp the fact that Alice, the epitome of constant motion, was gone. 

Now, I have to hasten to say that in true Alice fashion, she went out pretty much on her own terms.  She was over at the Elks Lodge literally dancing with her oldest son Walt when she died.  Right there on the dance floor.  Friends on the scene, first responder professionals, and emergency room personnel all did everything they could, but it was … well, time.  I love Walt’s take on the matter.  He told me “You could see God’s plans working perfectly and coming together right at that moment.  Of course we couldn’t see it at the time, but looking back, nothing has ever been so clear.”  Walter, I have to agree.  Even at our Neighbors Night Out event just last week (that she planned, of course), she was delighting in the fact that someone else had agreed to take over the reins for next year.  And what about her pet project, replacing the sign to Gulf Village that had been destroyed by an errant driver?  Same thing.  She carefully handed over that project as well.  She even went so far as to tell Chris that she had completed her research and had decided what flowers should put in the planter boxes near the sign.  Something that was drought-resistant, requiring little maintenance.  Something that was already big enough when it was installed that we didn’t have to wait any longer than necessary for everything to look perfect.  Sound like Alice?  You bet.

I’ve been thinking about what to say about Alice for two days now.  She was such an integral part of what happened in Gulf Village.  Just about everything that happened there pretty much went through Alice first, from Neighbor’s Night Out to community meetings with our City Council representative.  That’s where I was introduced to the first sitting City Council member that I have ever met – Alice’s living room.  When my Mom died, Alice was the one who volunteered to stay at the house when we had the service for Mom.  And she brought over some food.  She was always the one who insisted she wanted to stay in the background, but she was always the one you could count on to be there.  See, everything in Galveston now-a-days is dated pre-Ike and post-Ike.  I remember wondering, “Who’s gonna come back after Ike?  Who will rebuild and who will leave?”  And of course the answer to that thought was, “Well, Alice and Walt will be there.”  And the further response?  “Well, I know that.  I meant who else?”  You could count on the Whiteman’s.

Speaking of Ike, it’s not often that you can say you lived next door to the same person that your Dad did.  And your Grandad.  And your Great-Grandmother.  Yep.  My youngest son Nathan carries that distinction.  And he carries it proudly.  They had a chance to live next door to the Whiteman’s just before the storm. 

When Alice and Walter finally got the opportunity to snatch up that house on the corner of Sycamore and Cypress, they jumped at the chance.  They only had to move across the street, but that move brought my Mom and my Dad some of the closest friends they ever had, both physically and emotionally.  And that was a connection that was easy to make.  Walter, with his outrageous sense of humor, and Alice with her unbelievable ability to organize.  Who else do you know that can get away with telling everyone in the room exactly what to do without coming across as belligerent and mean? 

Do you remember that old movie, Holiday Inn?  Do you know where they got the idea for that movie?  From Alice Whiteman, I would imagine.  Every holiday you could count on Alice hosting one of those come and go affairs.  One of my fondest memories happened at one of those Alice parties.  I don’t remember the occasion, exactly, but we were at the Whiteman’s.  Some of the little kids came running into the house, bubbling over with excitement.  “It’s snowing!  It’s snowing!”  Of course the wisened old adults knew that couldn’t possibly be true.  After all, this is Galveston – the tropical island paradise, right?  Everybody knows it never snows here.  The explanations began about the difference between snow and what was most certainly happening outside.  It had to be sleet or at best maybe hail.  The “all-knowing” chuckles soon turned to “eating crow” grins, though, when the first adult confirmation of the phenomenon came.  And it wasn’t long before the whole bunch of us were outside, romping in the snow up and down Cypress Street right along with the kids and dogs.  Hey ... snow in Galveston?  That only happens every fifteen years or so.

Alice loved her yard.  That was the first place I ever saw real bananas actually growing. She even did what she could to help the other yards in the neighborhood move toward matching her excellence.  Notice I didn’t say outright matching her excellence.  That would be impossible.  Once she brought over some kind of flowers for Chris and assured her they would grow and be beautiful.  Guess what adorns much of our back yard flowerbed now?   Alice’s back yard was a sight to behold.  And I don’t mean just the flowers.  The whole arrangement was just perfect for entertaining as well.  More than once, those big glass doors leading from the house to the patio gave us a perfect view from our back yard of that big old TV screen.  We watched some good Astros baseball games just looking over the fence.

At the risk of this post being extra-long (I know … too late), back when Billie Biffle died, I wrote a little story about how I remember our beloved Gulf Village neighborhood.  I have had to adapt it in several places because many things have changed in the seven years since her memorial service.  Nevertheless, here it is:

I want to tell you about our neighborhood when we were growing up.  It was a black and white neighborhood.  I don’t mean that that there were black people and white people.  I don’t mean that everything was set in stone and every decision was clear-cut and easy.  I mean that when you think about it – our neighborhood – well, you see things that don’t seem to be around much anymore.  You see things that were common in the 50’s and early 60’s, but the only way to see them today is to watch someone’s old home movies – really old home movies - or some really old TV shows.  And really old home movies and really old TV shows only come in black and white.

I remember coming home from school and knowing that somebody in at least one of these houses was going to be home.  And if anything ever happened, we wouldn’t have to make it all the way home.  We had home extensions all over the neighborhood.

I remember walking to Island Elementary School.  They call it Parker Elementary now, but Mrs. Parker – that Mrs. Parker - was our real-live principal back then.  And she lived in our neighborhood!

I remember one game we made up.  It was actually a pretty stupid game.  We would try to run ahead of the bug-spraying truck.  It was great fun to stay just in front of that ominous cloud of dangerous chemicals, which are probably illegal today.  Of course we forgot that when you get tired, that cloud would overtake you, and engulf you!  But it was not necessarily a hopeless situation.  You see, we could always run to somebody’s house to escape the billowing dragon-mist.   And the door would always open, usually accompanied by a parental “Tsk” and a shake of the head.

I remember playing baseball in the Zion Lutheran churchyard, and football in the street, and riding bicycles everywhere – as long as we stayed out of Mrs. Jones’s front yard!  I remember leaving those bicycles anywhere, and finding them where we left them when we returned.

I remember offering to sweep gutters for a quarter to buy five packs of baseball cards, and people actually paying you … to sweep a gutter!

I remember going to Vacation Bible School at Zion every summer.  It didn’t matter that we all went to different churches the rest of the year.  For that one week we were all Lutherans.

I remember Nannie.  I was lucky because she was my grandmother and lived at our house, but I had to share her.  See, she was Nannie to the whole neighborhood.  I remember when we had school pictures taken.  That first picture belonged to Nannie.  Me and my brothers Jay and Stan had to give her our pictures to put under her glass tabletop.  But then so did Teresa, and Lisa, and Richard, and Walter, and Liz, and Paul, and Troy, and Baby Laura (Sorry, Laura), and Robert, and Philip, and their sister Liz, and Cindy, and Jay-Jay, and Tim, and Pat, and Mike, and … well, you get the idea.

I remember my parents’ unique idea to let us know when it was time to come home.  They had a bell that my dad got from the deep sea fishing boat he owned.  When it was time to eat or do homework or any of a million other reasons for us to be at home instead of out having fun, they would simply walk out the front door and ring the bell.  It’s not that the bell was that loud or that the acoustics of the front porch sent sound waves reverberating throughout the neighborhood.  It’s just that everybody knew what the bell meant, so everybody made it a point to deliver the message to the Vaughan Boys: “There’s the bell.”

I remember Halloween.  There were no pixie-stix scares in our neighborhood.  Everybody sat outside on their front porches and chatted as the kids made the rounds.  Mr. Whiteman must have loved Halloween, because he always had something to startle us out of our wits (my personal favorite was the year he dressed up like a toilet), but he always had us coming back for more.  And Mrs. Vaughan – that’s my mom – was the perfect Halloween witch – every year.  I think word got around about Halloween in our neighborhood.  Don’t try to drive through on Halloween night starting about 5:30.  It’s still packed with neighbors on the front porch chatting and children making the rounds.

I remember when we got older my Mom and Mrs. Biffle asking me, “Why don’t you take Teresa on a date?”  I understand my little brother got much the same treatment about him and Lisa.  For one thing, I had my share of rejection in high school, so I wasn’t about to add to my growing list of disappointments.  But for another thing – and this is what I told the two conspirators – I won’t ask Teresa out for the same reason I won’t date Donna or Cindy - there is an unwritten law that you just don’t date someone from the neighborhood. 

I remember the Vaughan’s, and the Whiteman’s, and the Biffle’s, and the Farrell’s, and the Goodman’s, and the Cook’s, and the Kunz’s, and the Cagnola’s.  Today Mrs. Vaughan is gone and Mario and Carolyn have taken up residence there.  The Glinski’s moved into the Farrell’s house, and though Al is gone, Corrie is still there. The Whiteman’s moved over to the Biffle’s house, and now they are all gone.  Jay-Jay Kunz lived in his parents’ house until Ike, and now that whole house is gone.  Mrs. Cook is still there, though she’s now Mrs. Putnam.  Neal Goodman is gone, too, and me and my wife live in the Cagnola’s house.

Our black and white neighborhood wasn’t exactly Mayberry from TV or Pleasantville from the movies.  But our black and white neighborhood was SAFE.  Our black and white neighborhood was FUN.  Our black and white neighborhood was HOME.

Why?

It wasn’t the houses, or the churchyard or the streetlight or the trees or the bushes.

It was the people … like Alice Whiteman.

Psalms 145:3-7 says, “Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom. One generation will commend your works to another; they will tell of your mighty acts.  They will speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty, and I will meditate on your wonderful works.  They will tell of the power of your awesome works, and I will proclaim your great deeds.  They will celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing of your righteousness.”

Father, thank you for the legacy Alice leaves for her children and for our whole neighborhood and for every other friend and relative she touched with her life.  The end of an era?  I don’t think so.  More like a great beginning.  For her – absolutely.  Enjoy her presence, Lord, as we have.  For her children – certainly.  Walk with those kids and grandkids of hers, and remind them often of some great Alice stories.  Amen.