Elena Follari

After 99 years, 50+ years of marriage, 3 children, 8 grandchildren, 8 great-grandchildren, and 1 great-great-grandchild, our mother passed away. She had quite the life. The older of 6 children, she grew up in San Francisco. After completing grade school her father took her out of school to help care for her younger siblings. She met our father as a young teen-ager, and at 16 eloped to get married. Her timing wasn?t so good: a month later came the 1929 stock market crash, and the early years of her marriage were spent in Arvin, Calif., where she and our father worked as farm hands. Neither she nor our father ever revealed the details of their life while they were estranged from her family (daughters of immigrant Italians parents didn?t run off with men ? even to get married). Eventually Nancy came along, and somehow the family was back in the Bay Area. They bought their first and only house in San Leandro in 1945, where all of us grew up and where mother lived until she could no longer care for herself. The house (I remember my father telling me the price was $6,000) was made possible by my father?s first steady job at the Alameda Naval Air Station. Mother?s greatest love (after her children, of course) was cleaning. We really could eat off the floor. She washed clothes with a wringer washing machine and scrub board (it was a great event when she got her first ?automatic? washer and dryer). She scrubbed floors, washed windows, ironed sheets, and vacuumed daily. We called the White Tornado, or the Energizer Bunny. In her spare time she baked cookies ? cans and cans of every variety. Every grandchild, then every great-grandchild, was spoiled with cookies (Dante will remember chocolate chip; BJ will remember puff balls; Paul held out for chocolate cream pie). Mother had 95 or so great years. She recovered against all odds from a heart attack at the age of 90, and again later from a massive stroke at 95. The stroke slowed her down, but she was able to spend her last years embroidering dish towels for anyone who would take one, celebrating holidays with her family, and doing cross-stitch pictures for her youngest great-grandchildren.

Elena Follari

July 15, 1912 - May 4, 2012