This is the eulogy I wrote for the funeral service of my eldest sister, Dora Maxine Wimmer Bevan Andelin. It isn't the exact words I spoke, but conveys the ideas behind them. (It's hard to read a prepared talk when one's eyes are filled with tears.) I'm publishing it at the request of one of my sister's grand daughters.
Dora Maxine Wimmer Bevan Andelin
Good-bye, sis. We love you, and we are going to
miss you.
Dora Maxine Wimmer Bevan Andelin
January 12, 1937 - July 17, 2016
Services held July 21, 2016, Peel Mortuary, Magna, Utah
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| Maxine Wimmer ca 1950 From Neva Wimmer's photo album |
Four score and, um, minus one, years ago, our father – and
our mother… Come to think of it, Mom probably did most of the work here…
brought forth into this world a new life, conceived in their love, and probably
dedicated to being very cute, their first born child, a little girl.
Mom told me the story of her birthday. It was January, 1937.
Dad didn’t have a car, so he had to borrow his brother, Dee’s, to take Mom to
the hospital. They were living here in Magna, and the closest hospital back
then was Cottonwood in Murray. It had snowed recently, and, according to Mom,
the snow banks along 3500 South were piled so high that you could walk along the tops
and unscrew the street lights… I have a
hard time imagining Dad ever being frantic about something, but I can certainly
imagine it here. So I guess we can give
him a little credit.
They named her Dora
Maxine. Now there is some controversy over whether they named her Dora Maxine
or Maxine Dora, but I always thought it was Dora Maxine, so I’m going with that
– I don’t care what her Tooele Army Depot forklift license says... The clerk
was probably overwhelmed by having to issue one to a woman!
In Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare asks, “What is in a
name?” and tells us “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as
sweet.” In this case, however, there’s a
lot in a name. The name Dora honors her maternal grandmother, Dora Matilda King
Meyrick, and connects her with the history of our mother’s family, and with
aunts and uncles and cousins.
The name Maxine, obviously, comes from Dad, Max Bryant
(sorry Dad, the secret’s out – it wasn’t just an initial B), and connects her
with our paternal family history, and another set of cousins, aunts and uncles.
These two names connect her – as they do us -- with where we’ve come from, with
the drummer boy at Monmouth Courthouse during the revolutionary war, with the
young family floating down the Mississippi River, with the Scottish lass who
lost her fingers to the loom and with the pioneers crossing the plains who met,
fell in love and married, with our German, English, Scottish and Welch heritage.
This is the legacy she carried forward.
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| Maxine (left) and Bonne Wimmer, ca 1940-41 from Neva Wimmer's photo album |
Her next name, Wimmer, is the name that she shares with me,
and is the name that says she is my sister. This name connects her to me, and
to our other sister, Bonnie, and brother, John. It is the name that makes us
all part of a family. It this name that gives her the right to call me Yogi.
(For the rest of you, it’s a privilege…) While I am from the same generation,
being 22 years her junior, we were not always as close as we would like to be,
but nevertheless, we are connected in
ways wonderful and profound that can only exist between siblings. Perhaps we
haven’t said it enough to each other enough – I know I haven’t, but we all love
each other very much. It is this love that makes this task so difficult.
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| Robert (Bob) and Maxine Bevan family, ca 1960 Maxine (left) Johnny, Bob, Cindy, Rick, Shelly From Neva Wimmer's photo album  |
The little girl grew up, fell in love, and married. She took
on a new name, Bevan. With this name she gave birth to and raised four
children; Shelley, Cindy, Ricky (uncle’s prerogative) and Johnny. These
children, in their turn grew up and had children of their own, continuing the
cycle, and connecting the little girl grown to woman with the future. They carry the legacy forward from her.
Then, as life in this chaotic world would have it, she took
on another name, Andelin, as she spent her mature years with her second
husband, Pat. Through that relationship, her life impacted his children and
family.
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| Shelley, Maxine, Juanita(?? somebody correct me...) and Bonnie on a golf outing, December 2013. Photo from Bonnie Holland |
Finally, there are those of you here today who name her ‘friend.’
There is a line from a song from one of my favorite Broadway musicals that I
think sums up what we can say about any friendship, “I don’t know if I have
been changed for the better, but I have been changed for good.” I don’t know
that Maxine ever saw the play Wicked,
but I am sure she would have loved it. Each life that Maxine touched was changed
by that touch. I think it is safe to say for those of you here today, that your
presence indicates that you think that touch has changed you for the better.
And so the legacy continues, from the mists of history to
the mystery of the future. Great or small, Dora Maxine Wimmer Bevan Andelin has
touched us all, and that touch has changed each and every one of us. The world
we live in is a different place than it would be had she not touched us, and
each of us going forward after today will be a little different, or a lot
different, because of that touch. The world may little note nor long remember
the specifics of what she did in this life, but we cannot measure the full impact
that her life has had, and will continue to have on the world around us.
We are met here today to say good bye to that precious life
that began 79 years ago. Her battles in this life are done. Her struggles and
worries and pain are at an end. If Bonnie’s ideas of what comes after this life
are correct, she’s probably got a tee-time to play the back nine with Dad, and several of her
cousins set for around two O’clock. I
hope that’s true. But I do have to wonder… If we’re all raised to our perfect
stature in heaven, do we still have a handicap? Or, perhaps she’ll go on a nice
long ride on her horse through a beautiful canyon.
It is customary in a eulogy to share some membered shared
event that helps to define the person’s character, but I confess that I am at a
loss to tell just one or two stories that would do the task justice. First,
Maxine’s character is complex, so it isn’t easy to describe. And, as I am 22 years her junior, she was
already married and had three kids before I came along, and I was too busy
being a kid to pay attention to what the grown-ups were doing for the most
part. Some of the memories I do have are so bitter-sweet that I don’t dare to
share them. I can say though, that my sister was always there for me when I
needed her to be. And she could ride a
horse…
So, rather than have me drone on and on, let’s take a moment
and each of us silently bring to mind that individual memory you each have of
Maxine, reflect on it, and reflect on how the event changed you. It has been
said that people come into our lives so we can learn from them. Consider what
cosmic lesson your association with my sister you are intended to learn, what
the touch of her life on yours did. If you take that with you, then my sister,
and her legacy, will live with us forever in your heart, as she will in mine.
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| Maxine Wimmer ca 1941 from Neva Wimmer's photo album |
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| Maxine Wimmer ca 1948 - 50 From Neva Wimmer's photo album |
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