.....................................................MOM'S EULOGY.......................................
On Sunday the day after mom's 90th birthday party my oldest daughter, Mindy had talked mom into sitting down and talking about her mother and father and how she came to Tulsa. My granddaughter Gracie was there to videotape the event, and I was there at Mindy's request to help keep things on track.
Mom, in typical mom fashion, told us she only had about an hour as she had an appointment. We all knew what her appointment was--she was headed to the casino as soon as she could get rid of us. But once she got started talking she ended up talking for almost 3 hours.
Many of the things she told us, although new information for Mindy and Gracie, I had already heard--or variations of many of the stories anyway-but I came away even more impressed by all of mom's accomplishments. Starting with the fact that she was raised motherless.
Her father, John Solomon, buried mom's mother, Oma Edna Mae Murphy, who had died of tuberculosis in Terre Haute, and moved mom and her 5 siblings cross-country to Tulsa in the midst of the Depression. Mom's dad was a pipefitter by trade who had refused to work in the coalmines. (As far as I'm concerned that was an early indication of family intelligence.)
On the trip to Tulsa Mom had some vivid stories of her dad sending her at age 5 and her little sister Mary, age 3, up to farmhouses asking for a quart of milk or biscuits while her dad and older brothers were raiding the farmer's hen house. Upon reaching Tulsa they lived in a tent near Lowell School on North Peoria.
Mom met our dad--Pete Tiner, in 1943, when he worked at the nearby Delman movie theater. Word is he wooed her with free popcorn--always a Tiner favorite no word on the dill pickles. They got married February 1 8th, 1944, when they were both 16--with mom's dad's new wife Mattie signing for mom and them lying about dad's age.
They kept the marriage a secret from dad's parents for 2 years. It was a match that would last 41 years, only separated by dad's death in March of 1985.
Shortly after her secret marriage, mom's dad and new wife moved to Chickasha without telling her. Mom just came home from high school one day, and they were gone. Mom thought the reason Mattie was so willing to sign for her and dad to get married was to get her out of the apartment.
Undaunted, mom got a job in Mrs. Gabriel's Whittier square grocery store, found a two room apartment nearby that required her to share a bathroom-upstairs--and paid and extra 10 cents a week for a fan and continued on at Central High in downtown Tulsa.
A few years after their high school graduation mom and dad moved into a two-room house that dad had built on a one-acre lot in Turley and they started their family.
Three months after the birth of my older brother Jay in August of 1948, mom found herself pregnant with me. An event that prompted her to sit down in the floor and start crying, she told me later. And that was before she'd even met me.
My sister Theresa's appearance in 1953 was explained by mom, in her typically blunt manner, by saying simply, I got confused about my days. We are all better for mom's confusion.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about mom is at a time when many parents thought that providing food, clothing and shelter was all that children required, and without a mother to mentor her, mom raised 3 children not just providing the basics of food clothing and shelter but providing the individual nurturing that children require to become strong and independent individuals. Teaching us not by word but by deed.
To be sure, she had help from dad with child rearing duties. But dad worked second shift at American Airlines. He left at 2:30 pm and got home at midnight.
Up the next morning at 5:00 am dad worked on our famlies trash route and managed to build 12 rent houses. Dad never made it to a little league game or swim meet or band concert but mom was there and our college was paid for.
When dad got sick in 1983 mom started walking at O'Brien Park as a way of dealing with the stress. Mostly she got to the park by 4:00 am. On one of my visits home soon after she started walking, I went with her to the park for a run, as I was a pretty serious runner back then. I discovered she wasn't walking--she was running.
When I came back in the fall of 1984 1 talked her into doing the Tulsa run with me. With mom's competitive nature, it didn't take much persuasion. The morning after the run, we were sitting at the kitchen table with dad checking the published results of the race-and there her name was. I don't remember exactly where she placed, but I remember she was in the top 10 of her age group.
She asked where my name was. I explained to her that there were 2,000 entrants in my age group, and they only printed the top 200, and that Olympic marathoner Frank Shorter had won my age group. She thought that was a rather lame excuse for not having my name in the paper. She simply raised an eyebrow and said "Huh". Her passion for running and later walking would continue throughout most of the rest of her life.
When dad died in 1985, mom entered a new phase of her life. She had always thought that if you were feeling down or a little low--you just needed to get up and go to work. When dad died she took a little of her own advice. She went to work with a vengeance.
She took over management of the properties--all aspects of the management of the rent houses, maintenance included. Leaky toilet, clogged drain, changing locks, cleaning and painting, you name it--she did it or arranged to have it done. That was a phase of her life that only ended with her death last Sunday.
Mom mostly lived a life without regret. She had losses to be sure--Dad, her beloved sister Leona, her brothers Cova and RT and later her second love, George Tune. But she never lost her sense of humor, and laughter got her through a lot of tough times. Another great gift from our amazing mother that my siblings and I share is that sense of humor.
As I said, mom lived a life without regret--mostly. I'm sure she regrets not voting absentee before she died. I'm sure she regrets dying before the Publisher's Clearinghouse big drawing that she was in the finals for, and had bought enough candy and nuts to ensure she was going to win. And finally, she probably regrets, no she's probably pissed off by our decision to publish her age.
Funeral service will be 2:00 P.M., Friday, November 2, 2018, Moore's Southlawn Chapel, 9350 E. 51st, Tulsa, OK. The family has asked in lieu of flowers please make donations to St. Jude Children Hospital at https://www.stjude.org/give.html Moore's Southlawn 918-663-2233.
Mrs. Tiner will be available for visitation on Thursday, November 1, from 9am to 9pm.