Beatrice E. Waller's Obituary
Bea was born in upstate NY on April 26, 1017 to Florence M. Monk and Clinton D. Monk. She had one sister, Dorothy H. Bullion, who later lived in Dunedin for many years. Bea graduated from the University of Kentucky where she met and married her college sweetheart, Josiah M. Waller, “Joe.” In 1941 they moved to Akron, Ohio, where her first child, Diane Hardy Waller was born. After the war, the three of them moved to Madisonville, Kentucky where their son, Roland “Chip” D. Waller was born. In 1951 they moved to Dunedin, where Joe passed away in 1993.
Bea is survived by her daughter, Diane, and son, “Chip” and his wife Patricia. Bea had three grandchildren: Jacki Wachtel, Jennifer Waller and Jeffrey Josiah Waller, “JJ”. There are four great grandchildren in the mix: Madelyn and Eli Wachtel, living in New Port Richey near their grandparents; and Miller and McCall Waller living in Atlanta Georgia with JJ and his wife, Elizabeth. Bea has a niece, Roberta Hopkins, living in Tennessee and two nephews, Eddie Hopkins in Pennsylvania and John Edwin Parker, who remains in Kentucky.................
The following is more interesting info about Bea, some in her own words from her “Personal Life History” that she wrote between 1990 and 2012 to share her life with her family. All words in italics were written by Bea.
Bea wrote, “Historically 1917 was an important year – the United States declared war on Germany, April 6. On April 26, Beatrice Ella Monk was born (NOT historically important, ha!) in a farm house in Upstate New York, Herkimer Country. A country doctor attended my birth and spelled my name incorrectly on my birth certificate. When I applied for a passport in 1970, my mother, 84, had to go with me to the courthouse in Clearwater and swear that “Betrice” was indeed Beatrice.”
They lived on several farms for six years. Bea wrote about the telephones, “We had an oak box on the wall with a crank on the side. You had to hold the receiver, which was attached to a cord up to your ear..…You spoke into a cup shaped attachment on the front of the oak box. We had a party line..… Our number was 2. You could hear the rings whenever someone on the line was receiving a call. One of our neighbors would listen in, which would annoy my mother. She could even guess who it was. ‘There is that nosy Kitty VanHuesen again!’”
Bea also wrote about mushrooms. “One of my treasured memories of life on the farm before I was six, is of going mushroom gathering with my mother. I had my own little basket and we would set out for the cow pastures. Mamma taught me how to tell the good mushrooms from
the toadstools. She would always remove the top skin and fry them in butter for supper. Served on toast, it was one of my favorite things to eat. My father did not like mushrooms and never ate any.
One day we were having great success. We had our baskets nearly half full when we came upon a HUGE mushroom. My mother said, ‘My goodness, ‘tis as large as our sugar bowl’ I was really excited and thrilled with our find. When my father saw it, her forbade my mother to cook it. …She informed him she could tell a mushroom from a toadstool! She proceeded to fry the small ones in a separate skillet, but she fried the big one for herself and sat right down and ate it. Papa was very angry and I was scared my mother would get sick and die. But – as she said, ‘I know a mushroom from a toadstool’.” (Many years later, mushrooms were still Bea’s favorite Sunday supper.)
When Bea was about six, her family moved a couple of times, and finally into a house with electricity. Bea wrote, “There was a good-sized room we called the pantry. Mom always said that was where we would put our bathroom. At that point we had no indoor plumbing. We had a pitcher pump connected to a cistern and a deep well outside where we would fill our water pail several times a day – also with a hand pump. I did not feel deprived because none of my friends had indoor plumbing either.”
Bea was home-schooled at first and then went to school, perhaps in a one room school house. She wrote about making a friend, “I became good friends with a little girl who lived nearby, named Cornelia Corwin. We had lots of good times playing together. She invited me to go to church with her. Even though I had gone to our Presbyterian church before, I loved that the minister would take timeout for a ‘children’s sermon.’ I think this was the beginning of my spiritual journey.
Please remember that in the 30’s in a rural community there were no planned activities for kids outside of school. Playing with paper dolls was one of my favorite pastimes. I had a wonderful assortment of beautiful people with ready-made clothes. However, I had a wall paper sample book about the size of a magazine only twice as thick. This provided material to design dresses of my own choosing Later I graduated to real fabrics which I pasted on heavy paper. Making my own paste was frustrating – first there was too much flour, then too much water. By the time I got it just right, there was way too much paste mixed. (I could not go down to the local store and buy ‘Elmer’s.)
“When I was about 14, we went to Gloversville, NY, where Uncle Ed and Aunt Addie lived. While there we went to see my mother’s uncle who was a violinist… He played his violin for us and I really enjoyed it. After he died my relatives gave me his violin. I was behind the door when God passed our musical talent, but I thought, ‘OK, maybe that should be my instrument of choice.’ I wasn’t very good at it and not terribly enthusiastic, but progressed so far as to play ‘The Blue Danube’ and a few other pieces of music with the high school orchestra. First violin, the only one. Ha, Ha! I think my parents had to listen to the terrible squawking when I practiced for four years.
Growing up in the country was far different than in a larger community. We had no movie theatre or anything else. In summer we played tennis, swam in Otsego Lake, sailed, roller skated on the sidewalks or just hung out in groups… Winter was lots more fun. We ice skated,
skied, tobogganed and went to someone’s house afterward for hot chocolate and popcorn. No temptations like drugs or alcohol.
We had one minor escapade with wine. Jim, the only other classmate of thirteen in our graduating class who was planning to go to college, and my boyfriend, discovered some dusty bottles of homemade wine in the basement. He would handle it with much care and transfer it to a large Listerine bottle. He tried very hard not to disturb the dust or leave finger marks. We would go out in the cold, cold air for one of the winter sports (I was best at sitting on a toboggan) and pass the Listerine bottle around. It kind of warmed us up, but that bit of fun did not last too long. He got caught.”
Bea’s first year of college she attended the New York State College for Teachers at Albany. “None of the reasons for going there, including being close to where Jim went to school, were very good as I was not sure I wanted to be a teacher. I pledged the sorority I liked best. To save money I lived with Aunt Cornelia. I loved Aunt Cornelia and we got along famously, but this was not my idea of ‘going away to college.’ I had been an A student in high school, but not so my first year in college. At the end of the second semester, I was restless and started campaigning to go away to school…. Doris Sickler came to spend the summer working at my parent’s business. She was all excited about going to the University of Kentucky in Lexington …. I sent away for catalogs immediately…Doris and I became fast friends and roomed together the next three years at U of K…
Not by myself with this problem, I did not know what I wanted to be. U of K College of Agriculture had a reputation for having an excellent College of Home Economics. I wanted to major in Textiles, but the advisor steered me away from that. She said it would not be a good field at that time. I decided to be a nutrition major, not knowing about the Chemistry courses I would need to take. I had a hard time with Chemistry, but the others were ok and I made good grades in all my other courses and was invited to join the honorary sorority.
Near the end of my Junior year, I met Joe Waller at a dance, who turned out to be the love of my life. Everybody was poor in 1938 (and beyond) as we were in the midst of the worst depression in American history. Outside of campus activities, our dates consisted of going to the library, roller skating (our first date), walking around downtown, going to the bus station sharing a bottle of olives and people watching, and that sort of thing. Oh yes, we sometimes went to the café across the street for a Coke.
I graduated in 1939 and got a job in Louisville at Donaldson’s Baking Company. Joe went back to his parents’ home in Hopkinsville and tried to find a job, any kind of job…We did not see each other much because it was a long way to Louisville. He finally got a job in a furniture factory there. (These were VERY hard times). We could not afford to get married….There were rumors of war in 1940 and he got a job (that paid well for the times) as a carpenter building a defense plant across the river in Indiana. We were married on my birthday, April 26, 1941, in the apartment I shared with three other girls. My parents stopped on their way back from a winter in Florida, Joe’s parents came up from Hopkinsville, loaded down with flowers, mostly spirea, to decorate the apartment. My parents hosted a dinner at the hotel across the street and we went on our weekend honeymoon to Cumberland Falls, (Kentucky’s Niagara Falls). We did not have much money, but we were happy. Our marriage lasted for fifty-two years until Joe’s death in 1993.”
Akron, Ohio, 1942:
“We moved to Akron, in the dead of winter so Joe could work for Goodyear Aircraft. …It was here that we were blessed with the birth of Diane Hardy, on November 14. This was her Grandmother Waller’s 50th birthday. Times were hard. We paid $45.00 per month rent including utilities and had a grocery budget of $5.00 per week. Coffee was 27 cents per pound and ground beef 19 cents. It was while I was pregnant, I joined the Goodyear Heights Baptist Church and was baptized by immersion. Our precious baby had six weeks of colic and cried a LOT. Our landlords asked us to move.
It was very hard to find a place to rent where they would accept a child. We borrowed money from our parents and bought a two-story house with basement and attic and a beautiful yard and fruit trees. Leighton Avenue was a horseshoe shaped street that went up a steep hill and back down. Up the hill from us lived two little old ladies in a small two room house. We always spoke to them but did not really know them... One of them became very ill and the other one went to live with relatives. We bought the house and lot without ever seeing the inside for $900. After we had the closing and inspected it, we found it had no running water, no sewer, no septic tank. The city of Akron was not interested in suppling water or sewer. We thought we had bought a read dud; tho’ it had a beautiful view of Summit Lake. We decide to advertise it for sale. We advertised it as a two-room house with a view in the Sunday paper for $1,400. Our phone rang off the hook all day. We sold it to the first caller, so our white elephant had turned out to be our first profitable real estate venture.
About this time Goodyear Aircraft closed down, and Joe was laid off. We dreamed of moving to Florida, but our friends talked us out of it. ‘You can’t earn a good living in Florida in the summer.’ We decided maybe to move to Texas. For many reasons that didn’t work out.
We were at a crossroads. Joe wanted to start his own business, so we zeroed in on Madisonville, KY. We sold our house in Akron at a nice profit and started the remodeling on the new (to us) old house in Madisonville, envisioning turning it into a charming old southern home (Ha). I enjoyed that, but the remodeling made a lot of messes to clean up. (Very trying) Joe’s business did not take off – to put it mildly. We lived in Madisonville for a little over four years. The best things that happened was the birth of our son, Roland Dudley (Chip) on December 6, 1946, the neighbor lady, and other lasting friendships.
We decided once again to move to Florida. In December of 1949, we came to visit Mom and Dad in Largo. Joe had never been to Florida and fell in love with it. We even bought a lot in Clearwater – ‘cold feet insurance’, Joe called it. We put our house on the market as soon as we got home. It had been up for sale almost a year when we came to see my parents in January, 1950. They had moved to Dunedin, which we liked even better. When we returned to Madisonville, we had no sooner gotten our bags unpacked when a real cash buyer came along. We moved on Valentine’s Day, 1951. We loved Florida from the very first day.”
They settled in with Bea’s folks while the new house was built at 51 Broadway in Dunedin, and they joined the First Baptist Church and made many new and fun friends. Their Baptist friends did many things together, including progressive dinners every month. In 1956, when her kids were both in school, Bea began teaching third grade. She had a BS in Home Economics but had to go to night school to become fully qualified as a teacher, something she hadn’t thought she wanted to do when she was at the teacher’s college years before. She liked the kids and continued teaching for ten or twelve years. When she resigned, she took real estate
classes and joined the Robert Tharin agency. After a few years, she and Jim Brandt left Tharin Agency and formed Brandt Waller Real Estate, which she enjoyed for three years until she retired.
“We thought we would like to have a summer home in North Carolina. We made several trips looking for property. We wanted a lot with a beautiful view and decided on a gorgeous location in the Blue Ridge mountains just outside the small mountain town of Blairsville, Georgia. This was just over the North Carolina Line. There were four acres in our plot, not many trees. We could see 30 mountain peaks, including Brasstown Bald (the highest point in Georgia) …. We came back to Dunedin and put our house up for sale. Joe and I were in good health so we needed a hobby. Our land was hilly but not mountainous. Erosion was taking its toll after the land was cleared. After touring the Georgia Agricultural station nearby, we decided it would be fun to start a Christmas Tree farm. We planted 3,000 trees over a two-year period; about two thirds of them lived and thrived. Joe kept the field mowed like a golf course between rows….”
(Bea wielded a machete to keep the trees growing properly.)
“When we were in Blairsville, I had taken lessons at the local fabric store in quilting.”( They built and maintained a home in Palm Harbor, with a beautiful view of the bay.) “In Florida in 1985, I joined a club in Palm Harbor called Quilter’s Crossing. I was pretty passionate about my new hobby and learned a whole lot in the twenty years I belonged to that club. There was a lot more to it in the way of new techniques and designing ‘art quilts.’ I had two of my quilts published in national magazines.
After seven summers (in Blairsville) we decided we had had it with closing up one house and opening up another. We sold our house and our trees, which were about ready to harvest. It was good to be back in Florida full time.” (Note: At some point a few years later they drove by the farm they had named Windswept Hill, and to their disappointment the new owners had not kept the trees trimmed so they really couldn’t be marketed. All Bea’s work with the machete had been for naught.)
“Joe’s health started to go downhill about the time we gave up our mountain home and moved back to Florida full time… He was ill for one and a half years and died in March of 1993. These were sad years for me. I lived in that house (where I loved the sunsets) for two more years. In 1995, I moved to a townhouse in Dunedin in Braemore Village and lived there for 11 years. In 2006, I decided it was time to move to Mease Manor. I wanted to make this change while I was still in good health and could enjoy all the amenities in independent living. I was 89 years old.
It is now 2013, and I never expected to live this long. It occurred to me that someone might interested in what it is like to live in a retirement community in the early 21st Century. We half-jokingly refer to it as God’s Waiting Room. (Actually, it’s mostly true.) Sometimes I hear people say the golden years aren’t so golden. I have to say that I have enjoyed my stay here and I am now 96. In addition to enjoying the meals in our beautiful dining room, having my apartment cleaned for me on a weekly basis, meeting interesting people and making new friends, it is relaxing to be able to have time to sew and enjoy my other hobbies. Each month we receive an activities calendar which shows the many opportunities to participate in exercise and yoga classes, line dancing classes, book reviews, music programs and other presentations in the auditorium. There are lots of other things going on and this is to name a few. NO time to get bored or restless.”
Some additions that don’t follow chronologically but were important to Bea:
In 1959, Joe and his best friend Jim Moore built campers on their trucks and both families traveled 5,965.5 miles across the United States. This was a highlight of our family’s life.
Bea and Joe started square dancing at the First Presbyterian Church, and this was a very fun part of their life. They ultimately moved their church affiliation to FPC where Bea served on the Session, belonged to an active circle and became the librarian for fourteen years. She had many, many friends from FPC and stayed very socially active in the church until the pandemic when she couldn’t attend anymore. Who can say if it was square dancing or theology that generated the move?
She at some point became a founding member of Inner Wheel, the community of the wives of the members of the Rotary Club.
Bea and Joe traveled frequently: trips to the Caribbean at first, then to Alaska, Hawaii, through the Panama Canal, and then to Europe many times, and even to Australia and New Zealand. She kept meticulous scrap books of these journeys. When she moved from Braemore Village to Mease Manor, she didn’t move many those scrapbooks, which she later regretted. Her last trip was for her 90th birthday, a cruise with some Presbyterian friends to Rome. The band played, “Happy Birthday” to her and the ship gave her champagne. That made her happy.
Bea enjoyed her three grandchildren and later the four great grandchildren, all named above. At Mease Manor, she had a loving circle of friends who gave her friendship daily and emotional support until the very end. She was very fortunate that she was healthy except for her knees. Not bad for 103.
She said, “After I die, I’d like to be remembered as a person who cares about others’ feelings.”........................
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