CELEBRATING ALVINA

Wherever you are, we hope you will gather with the many friends you had in common with a remarkable woman, Alvina (It's "Al-vine-uh", not "Al-veen-uh") May Gramlich Taylor, to celebrate her life. As you reminisce with your group, please take time to make a record of your memories to share with others who loved and cherished her at https://bit.ly/Alvina-M-Taylor.

Hers was a life of caring, doing, and giving. She wanted for nothing; she had all she needed. Even in her passing, she did not want people to make a fuss over her, spend any more money on arrangements than necessary, or incur the expense of travel to a place she no longer was physically. Instead, she wanted a simple graveside gathering with her immediate family and to be laid to rest in the niche next to that of her beloved husband, Frederick Thomas Taylor.

Alvina was born on May 27th, 1938, in Provost, Alberta, Canada, the fifth of eleven children. Raised on a farm six miles outside Bodo, Alberta, she learned all about doing and getting things done as part of a team. Being at various times the youngest child, then a middle child, and finally an older child, she was raised in part by Eleanor and Ida, and helped raise the younger kids – especially "baby sister" Janet and several of her nieces and nephews.

Much of her early life I gathered from her eldest sister Eleanor's recent eulogy and by talking with her siblings. There are still gaps here and there, and I'm hoping others will help fill them in.

Alvina's parents came to Canada as children: her German father Martin Phillip Gramlich was from Crimea in Russia, and her German mother Mary Jennie Schmidt was from outside Buenos Aires in Argentina. After they married, they settled in the Provost, Alberta, area and began to build their family. German was frequently spoken in the home and the area, but English was what the children learned in school – when they were able to go.

Growing up on the farm, there was no running water or plumbing. They did have electricity and eventually a black and white TV, but that was the extent of their luxuries. There was plenty to do on the farm. In the mornings, cows had to be fetched to be milked, and the pigs had to be slopped. After milking the cows, they had to separate the cream from the milk, then wash and clean the separator before getting ready to go to school. Alvina once tried to climb up on the separator, knocking it over on top of herself, breaking her arm in the process. Since it was still full, elder sisters Eleanor and Ida were left to clean up after her.

There was no shortage of other chores: washing clothes on old wooden or metal washboards, then hanging it to dry. Alvina always seemed to have a clothespin or three with her, just in case. Alvina's mother also had a prolific garden which brought its own work: planting, weeding, picking, cooking, canning, and more. The kitchens were where she and her siblings learned the most. There were two kitchens in the house: a summer kitchen that had a cellar with straw where they'd place the blocks of ice that kept the cream and other things cool. The winter kitchen had a coal and wood stove that was started with cow chips. Ah, the smell of cooking that brought! During the seeding season, Alvina's father walked around the field with the horses to do the planting. Things are far different now, but they did start the farm nearly one hundred years ago.

Although there was always plenty of work to do, there was time for play and entertainment as well. Alvina and her siblings would engage in games around the farm such as Run Sheep Run, Prisoner's Base, cricket, and baseball or just hide and seek in the haystacks. Saturday nights were always special. First, Alvina and her sisters would have to scrub the front room, and then they would have to slide over the floor to polish it more. Sometimes they would all go to her uncle's place to watch Bonanza. But most of all, Saturday night was bath night. One large tub filled with water heated on the stove, and the youngest was bathed first, followed by the other kids by age, and finally their mother and father. Alvina was only able to enjoy being first for a couple of years, when Elsie came along.

The family also played cards – cribbage, "Dad's Rummy", Rookie, and Durak were Alvina's favorites. The original Durak game came from Russia, and was played with only 36 cards, but they used all 52 so more of the kids could play at once. Dad's Rummy was a great way to spend time one on one since it was a game that best for just two. In addition to jokers, each hand had a second card that was wild, starting with aces for the first hand and finishing with kings on the last hand. Thirteen rounds gave plenty of time to spend with that one person. There was also Crokinole, a tabletop game that's a lot like curling but is played on a wood board with little wooden discs. When the girls were older, if they were able to beat their father, he promised to take them to the dance. Unfortunately for the girls, he was an expert and never had to make good on that promise. Alvina still had a Crokinole/Carom board and an Aggravation game board made by her dad waiting for the next round of players just inside her doorway.

There were events that required a lot of cooking and gathering. During threshing season, the extra hands would sleep in the barn, and Alvina's mother and her daughters would be up early to prepare full breakfasts, lunches that they delivered to the fields, and wonderful suppers. If someone showed up unexpectedly, which often happened before they had a telephone, Alvina's mother would go out to the barn to get a chicken, chop its head off, pluck, clean, and cook it for supper. Talk about farm to table! Her parents had a namesake day round Christmas time. On this special day, all the neighbors and relatives would arrive in the evening for a special feast. There so was much preparation beforehand, but it was worth it. Mrs. Gramlich made her own cheese which she poured into a small cardboard box lined with wax paper. There was also sweet, rich Halva, which was only available at Christmas time. From her mother, Alvina learned how to bake bread, make pierogies, and just become a wonderful baker and cook.

Alvina and her siblings attended a one-room school for Grades 1 through 8, first at Zering School No. 952, then Dochart School No. 1038. One-room schools were common across rural Alberta in the early part of the 20th century, where a single teacher would typically teach all subjects to students of all ages. This could be a challenge, as the students would be at different levels of learning. School was a privilege, so morning chores were expected to be done early to ensure they were off to school on time on a regular basis.

Alvina also attended Theresetta Catholic School in Castor for grade 9, returning to Bodo for grade 10. She graduated as a nursing aide after attending nursing school in Ponoka and Grande Prairie. While she was in Grande Prairie in 1961, she broke her leg. All her nieces dressed up like they had broken legs as well to humor her!

Alvina worked as a nursing aide until meeting the love of her life, Frederick, at Grande Prairie Hospital, where he was a medical records librarian fresh out of the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corp. It was Alvina who proposed marriage to Fred, and at her insistence, they were married on May 12, 1962, in Grande Prairie. And what a wonderful marriage it was!

Alvina only worked about three and a half months in 1963, as she was pregnant with their first child and Fred had accepted a job at the Royal Alexandra Hospital that took them to Edmonton, Alberta, in April. Perfect timing, as that allowed them to set up a new home before son Robert Charles Taylor arrived on July 14th, 1963. Daughter Maureen Edith Taylor was born on October 20th, 1964, a few months earlier than her expected due date of Christmas. They kept her at the hospital until she finally made it above 5 lb., allowing her to join the family on November 29th.

In 1966, they were finally able to get out of the tiny apartment they had started their family in and moved into a small house in Edmonton. It was a little farther away (5km vs. 2.6km) from work, but worth it to have a little breathing room with two kids under foot. In 1967, to celebrate Robert's fourth birthday, the family took one of many trips to Estes Park in Colorado. The scenery is beautiful, the saltwater taffy is delicious, and Maureen absolutely loved to feed the chipmunks! Later that year, Fred accepted a job at Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, OK, where Alvina and Fred lived the remainder of their lives. They rented a house in mid-town Tulsa, allowing Robert and Maureen to be close enough to walk to elementary school.

Most vacations were long summer visits to Canada to see Alvina's family. Every couple of years, the family would pack up the car and make the trek to Alberta, staying for a month to six weeks, usually with an out of the way stop in Estes Park. No trip was complete unless you visited each of her brothers and sisters at their homes! As car travel gave way to plane trips, they traded Estes Park for visits to Grande Cache and Banff or Jasper National Park. For the kids, visiting Ted, Eleanor, Alfie & Elaine on the farm, Armond & Marilyn in Grande Cache, and Jim & Bea and their girls at The Ponderosa for pit barbecue and horseshoes were the highlights, but seeing the grandparents and all the aunts and uncles and cousins was a delight, especially since it was a rarity compared with how often the rest of the family was able to get together.

In 1976, Alvina and Fred bought their first home, still in mid-town near I-44 and Yale Ave. There, each of the kids had their own bedroom and there was even a half bath in the main bedroom to augment the main hall bath. Alvina's main and most important "career" had been raising Robert and Maureen. But as the kids reached their teenage years, she was able to find interests outside the home to keep her busy. She started learning how to use, then selling, then teaching how to paint using Artex. While she never made a profit with the business, she got plenty of satisfaction from being able to create beautiful things and teach others how to do so as well, and earned many new friends she would hold dear for years.

As retirement drew near for Fred, Alvina started working in the cafeteria at the high school where Robert and Maureen attended. After they graduated, she went back to her original vocation of nursing, working at both Methodist Manor and as a private duty nurse in peoples' homes. There she met Sherreé Lamb, one of her oldest and dearest friends, and the only one outside of immediate family who was with her on her last day on this earth.

Fred kept busy in retirement with a big band radio show he DJed on KNGX, did some taxes for H&R Block, and put together a management information system at the American Red Cross. Over the next decade, there was a lot of hand and foot canasta, Durak, and Dad's Rummy played at the Taylor household when Robert & Sharon visited. It was usually the girls against the boys, and games often went late into the night. Alvina often nodded off, so Sharon would give her a gentle nudge under the table, to which Alvina rhetorically asked, "Is it my turn?"

Throughout her life, Alvina demonstrated an amazing level of independence, creativity, resourcefulness, and frugality. Being the fifth child of eleven (and third girl), she only ever had one new dress. Almost all her clothes were hand-me-downs that she had to alter. She could mend most anything, and always had a few projects on hand that she would do for others. While most people offered to pay her, the amount of time she spent wouldn't have been justified if she hadn't loved the work and the ability to please others.

After Fred passed in 1995, she started focusing more on other interests that would allow her to meet new people. Garage sales were her favorite. It didn't matter if she was having one or visiting one – she thought the people who went to them were the most interesting people to get to know. And of course, she found many diamonds in the rough she could turn into treasures. She joined a widows' group that met once a week to play cards, where she made close friends and even found a few boyfriends, although she always said, "I don't need a man!"

Maureen blessed Alvina with two grandchildren and one great grandchild. Joshua Wayne Childress was born in Cottonwood, Arizona, USA on July 24, 1996. Allison Marsailes Childress was also born in Cottonwood, arriving on June 15, 1998. Finally, Josh's daughter Catherine Lilith Childress was born on April 12, 2019, in Grand Junction, Colorado, USA.

This house was small by modern standards, and it seemed like she was always finding a new project that she needed a place to store until she got "a round tuit" as she would say. She built cabinets above doorways or bookcases from repurposed lumber, applying her trademark vinyl contact paper that looked like wood paneling to the latter to give things a finished look.

She made many trips back to Canada for family reunions, the last in 2022. A favorite when the girls were together was the making of pierogies. If you only had a few people, it was too much work to make all that food, but just right when everyone was there. Baking bread was like that for Alvina – she only knew how to make a batch of eight loaves at a time!

There were many trips from the family to Tulsa, but always in smaller groups and much less often in frequency. The best story that came out of those trips was when several of the siblings chased the police down the highway at nearly 100 mph to get directions to Alvina's home.

Alvina was able to visit Robert and Sharon as they moved from place to place, including various stints in Dallas and Austin along with Northwest Arkansas and Charlotte. On one trip to Dallas with her best friend, they got so caught up in talking that they didn't realize they were following a 75-mph speed limit sign instead of highway 75. After she was several hours overdue, Robert and Sharon finally got ahold of her. They were almost all the way to the Arkansas border. There was a lot of good-natured laughing at that one! We sometimes forgot that she didn't have a phone with built-in GPS. On another trip down, she was looking for the street we lived on to be an exit off highway 75. From then on, we made sure we sent her detailed directions.

There are very few things that Alvina ever spent money on that she thought was wasteful. While she enjoyed playing bingo and the slot machines at the casino, those were more for entertainment than any thoughts of making money. She limited her losses to the little bit of mad money she stored in an empty Folger's container in her freezer. Her best friend Beverly finally talked her into taking a cruise to Alaska in 2016. She had always refused previous invitations to join Robert, Sharon, and Sharon's family because she didn't want to have to pay for a cabin for two while traveling alone – even if the money came from someone else. We knew how much she enjoyed it as she finally admitted that she would love to go on another.

Alvina's favorite pastime was making her own greeting cards, typically from cardboard boxes or Coors Light beer can liners. She signed her masterworks by two names: "The Box Lady", in deference to the materials used above, and "INDY" for "I'm Not Done Yet." One of the last things she said before she passed was that she was finally "Done." She earned her eternal reward Thursday, September 7th, 2023, surrounded by her son Robert (and "bonus daughter" Sharon) Taylor, daughter Maureen Childress, grandchildren Joshua and Allison Childress, and cherished friend Sherreé Lamb.

She is also survived by siblings Ida Baier Bosch, Harold (Alice) Gramlich, Elsie (Otto) Dewald, Serena Konopka, Armond (Marilyn) Gramlich, Paul (Alice) Gramlich, and "baby sister" Janet (Pat) Keller, great granddaughter Catherine Childress, and numerous nieces and nephews and their extended families.

Alvina was preceded in death by her beloved husband, Frederick Taylor; parents, Martin and Mary Gramlich; brothers, Archie Gramlich and James Gramlich; nephew, Jeff Dewald; and sister Eleanor Abbott.

She talked often of late of visiting Ireland. No one could really figure out why she chose a location where she didn't have family history nor had ever been. She finally admitted it was just something interesting to talk about – a conversation starter. But if you listen to the lyrics to one of her favorite songs, you might see how she was perhaps foreshadowing her final journey:

Galway Bay, written by Arthur Colahan, recorded by Bing Crosby

If you ever go across the sea to Ireland, then maybe at the closing of your day,

You will sit and watch the moonrise over Claddagh,

And watch the barefoot gossoons at their play.

Just to hear again the ripple of the trout stream, the women in the meadows making hay

And to sit beside a turf fire in the cabin and see the sun go down on Galway Bay.

For the breezes blowing o'er the seas from Ireland are perfumed by the heather as they blow

And the women in the uplands diggin' prates speak a language that the strangers do not know.

For the strangers came and tried to teach us their way,

They scorned us just for being what we are.

But they might as well go chasing after moonbeams or light a penny candle from a star.

And if there is going to be a life hereafter, and faith I'm sure there's going to be,

I will ask my God to let me make my Heaven in that dear land across the Irish sea.

Alvina requested no funeral or memorial service. Instead, she asked for her family in Canada and friends in Tulsa and elsewhere to gather to share in their own celebrations of her life. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the American Heart Association, the Saint Francis (Tulsa) Children's Hospital Foundation, or your favorite charity in her name.

The last thing to relate is her absolute favorite song of all time:

The Rose, written by Amanda McBroom, recorded by Bette Midler

Some say, "Love. It is a river, that drowns the tender reed."

Some say, "Love. It is a razor, that leaves your soul to bleed."

Some say, "Love. It is a hunger, an endless aching need."

I say, "Love. It is a flower, and you, its only seed."

It's the heart afraid of breaking, that never learns to dance.

It's the dream afraid of waking, that never takes the chance.

It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to give.

And the soul afraid of dyin', that never learns to live.

When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,

And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,

Just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows,

Lies the seed that, with the sun's love, in the spring, becomes the rose.

Please help us celebrate the wonderful mother, auntie, and friend she was to so many.