The Beautiful, Purposeful Life of Beverly Bonn Jonnes

by Steve Jonnes

Preparing my remarks today was different than writing Dad’s eulogy in 2011 because Mom actually offered suggestions. She requested I read the poem from her birthday party two years ago, which I will do later, that I tell the story of our famous road trip to California in 1962 – which I just did – and that I mention my brother’s name at least 10 times.

Three days before Mom died, I mentioned upon arriving from the airport that her face was starting to look more jaundiced.

Mom replied, “I did that because I knew you studied Chinese!”

Yeah, she never lost her sense of humor. Last summer, I was presenting a bowl of ice cream and said, “Boy, I guess there’s at least one benefit to dying – you can eat whatever you want.”

Without missing a beat, in a toneless, humorless voice, she responded, “Yep, happy days are here again!”

That cracked me up and we both ended up laughing so hard we had tears in our eyes. That become our running joke. Happy days are here again.

No one, no one, looked on the brighter side of life better than my Mother. Beverly Bonn Jonnes was a humanist, an optimist, a fundamentally hopeful and cheerful person who made everyone around here feel better. Life was just sunnier in her presence. To me, this is her greatest gift.

All of us have challenging periods in our lives, even dark times. Life is not always easy. We have setbacks. We get anxious. We suffer. But one thing that constantly amazes me about myself is that, deep down, no matter how bad things get, no matter how stressful I might feel, I always, always assume that things are going to get better, that things will improve in the future. I inherently see the bright side. I got that from Mom. She had that influence of making you feel good about yourself, making you feel good about life.

It’s what drew my Father to her. The story we heard of my parent’s first dates in college with each other in Yellow Springs, Ohio in 1950, was told many times. On one of those dates, my Dad opened up and related how rotten his life was and how pessimistic and misanthropic he was. His parent’s divorce, the evil step-mother … that whole sob story. Mom was not impressed.

She said, “Phooey. I don’t want to hear your poor-me stories. You survived the war, you have your health, and you’re attending a good college. I like you but I don’t want to see you again if you’re always going to feel sorry for yourself.”

Well … Dad was thunderstruck, absolutely bowled over, and he begged her to reconsider. Which she did of course. Thankfully …

As you can imagine, Mom was adamantly opposed to self-pity. She believed that no human emotion is more debilitating than self-pity and it only takes a little willpower to overcome it.

She was happily married to Dad for 60 years, the only man she ever knew. As I said at Dad’s service in 2011, the greatest stroke of good fortune in his life … was meeting and marrying Beverly Jean Bonn. My Mother stood by his side stalwart and true for 61 years. It bears repeating, but she is testimony to the transforming power of love.

I’ve realized in preparing my eulogy that I have no memory of my parents ever yelling at each other or getting into any nasty, ugly fights. I know Mom was pretty upset when Dad up and sold the piano that Uncle Jack bought her, and I know she was more than upset when he tore apart most of our family photo albums she had painstakingly built for more than 20 years – but there was still no yelling that I can recall. Dad certainly yelled at us (or maybe barked is a better way to put it), but never at Mom.

They had passionate intellectual arguments, of course. I remember being 7 in the pink house in East Aurora, New York, when they got into a heated debate during dinner about whether black was a color or the absence of color. There’s a philosophical riddle for you. I was enthralled. But they never raised their voices at each other. How rare is that?! What a wonderful childhood to be raised in!

Yes, my childhood – our childhood – was very, very special. It was so special that I never wanted to grow up … and I still haven’t.

The mental image of Mom that I carry in my mind and in my heart is probably different from everyone else’s. I always envision her from 1958, when I was 5 and she was 26 and still svelte. When she looked more beautiful than Elizabeth Taylor and was more personable than Betty White, and when she seemed a cross between Mary Poppins and Maria from Sound of Music. Elegant, intelligent, creative, patient, perceptive, charming, and wise.

That was the year I bought my first gift for her, on April 26, 1958, her 26th birthday. Four tall red-and-white striped tumblers that lasted for years. I was very thoughtful about the gift buying, and to Dad’s credit, he gave me time to shop. I still remember the store on McKnight Rd. in Maplewood. She and I referenced that gift with each other through the years; it seemed to act as a talisman of our magical early times together.

Speaking of 1958, that was the year “cowboy soup” became famous in our family. Mrs. Weigert, a neighbor, asked Mom if she could watch her son Bobby, age 4, for a few hours and serve him lunch. She warned that Bobby was a very stubborn, finicky eater who would only eat peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches! She was dead serious. Mom kind of glanced at me with a twinkle in her eye. This was her kind of challenge! I got excited because I knew immediately that she was going to cure Bobby … even before it happened.

So, she made bologna sandwiches and heated up a couple cans of grocery store soup. Then while the soup was warming up, she proceeded to tell Bobby a tall tale about the special soup she was making. She painted a picture of cowboys wearing their heavy coats and sheepskin chaps out on the high Wyoming plains working all morning in the saddle, herding the cattle, roping and branding, fighting the cold, howling wind, and then coming back to the ranch house for lunch where the cook had prepared a big vat of a deeply rich, nutritious soup. That was the soup she was making for him now. She went on about it for quite a few minutes in the most sincere, believable way.

Mom finally asked, “Would you like to try some cowboy soup, Bobby?”

Well, that boy wolfed down two bowls, ate the sandwiches, … and his mother’s reaction to the news was a sight to behold – especially after she asked – “Is it a special family recipe?”

Mom replied, “It’s just Campbell’s Scotch Broth!” Mrs. Weigart had a new-found respect for Mrs. Jonnes.

You see, Mom had the most wonderful inventive, child-like imagination. It’s one of her most defining characteristics. Deep in her soul, Mom was an artist. It explains her interest in poetry. But you have to remember: she also excelled in music and drama. (Thank you, Joanie Beaver!) And while she had some but not outstanding skill as a drawer or painter, she appreciated visual arts too. If you never visited an art gallery with Beverly, you really missed out.

Mom was like this secret weapon you had in your life. One of my greatest pleasures has always been the simple act of introducing people to her. It always tickled me to see other people’s reactions and made me so proud to have a Mom like that. Every close friend I ever had was nuts about her, and some were distinctly envious.

I remember one kid who told me, “I wish your Mom was my Mom!”

And, of course, every year, 1st through 6th grade, she came to my elementary school class to talk about Ethiopia and serve doro wat to my classmates.

Looking back now, I guess I liked the reflective glory from having such an incredible mother. “Oh, you’re mother is like this! Maybe you’re not such a loser after all!”

Mom could emotionally connect with people faster than anyone I’ve ever known. She was such a good friend and confidant. And even in these last few years, Mom was still wowing new people. At our wedding 3 years ago, Jessica, an old friend of Lucia’s, spent a few days hanging out with us at the house. She got to know Mom and approached me privately the day she left and paid her a truly splendid compliment.

“Your Mom is amazing! She is my new role model. I hope when I’m older I can be as classy as her!” That’s almost word-for-word. It really touched me, and I thought, wow, Mom’s still got it.

Well, she always had it, so to speak, didn’t she? But what did she have? What made Beverly so special? We can never answer that fully, of course. Certainly we know of her creativity and her ability to connect with people, but let me mention a couple traits that may not be so obvious.

First, Mom was discrete. You never met anyone with whom you could share a secret more securely than Bev Jonnes. You could tell her anything and it would never get back to anyone else. She refused to gossip and very, very rarely spoke badly about anyone behind their back. The game of telephone always stopped with her.

Second, my Mother had gravitas. She had a dignity about her that was hard to miss, and people, especially children, respected and obeyed her instinctively. Underneath the wittiness and the fun-loving silliness, she was in fact a profoundly serious person, and she lived a profoundly purposeful life. Mom wasn’t driftwood, that’s for sure.

On rare occasions, she could be surprisingly firm. Mom never made a threat that she wasn’t willing to carry out, and she had no compunction about carrying out her threats. She was generally liberal as a mother and teacher. She gave you wide boundaries and her threats were few. She led more by example than anything else. But there were boundaries … and there were consequences to crossing those boundaries.

Lastly, Mom had luck. She had what the Chinese called 幸福 – Good Fortune. It was a topic she talked about a lot during her illness and even addressed it in her autobiography. She was born under a lucky star … and she truly had the most beautiful, rewarding life.

Think about it. She grew up in Montevideo, Minnesota – idyllic small town America. Her parents, Bert & Helen, were well suited to each other, and were liked and respected in town. She excelled in school and was popular, not to mention beautiful. She married a man who was not boring. She had a Duchenne smile. She had four healthy, semi-intelligent children. She never experienced the trauma of losing a child before her own death. She never experienced the trauma of losing a grandchild. She had three fantastic siblings – Stephen, Susan, and David – and none of them predeceased her. She found a job that was perfect for her, a school teacher in an open school. And she found the perfect past-time in retirement: poetry.

So, yes she was lucky. She had good fortune. But it is important to emphasize that she also made her own luck. In fact, she made some decisions while only in high school that guided her the rest of her life. You never met a more mature teenager.

First, she adopted as her life’s guiding principle the motto of the famous 19th century educator Horace Mann: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

Second, she tried to behave according to a set of social rules which her father had created. I found the list after she died; I had forgotten about it. The list is titled, “If you are Well Bred.” You can read the full list over on the display table, but here’s a sampling just to give you the flavor of the thing:

You will not measure your civility by people’s bank accounts.
You will not think that good intentions compensate for rude or gruff manners.

I asked around and all Bev’s siblings remember the list. The consensus is that it was a list their father wrote when he was a young man. So it’s probably nearly a century old. It is an old-fashioned list, but my Mother took the rules on it very seriously and I believe she tried very hard to follow them all her life.

The point is – Beverly Bonn Jonnes lived a purpose-driven life. She made certain life decisions when very young and stuck by them. She had a powerful, powerful will. Although she recognized she was lucky, she believed in the final analysis that her own decisions fashioned and shaped her life more than the good fortune she was blessed with – and I agree with her.

Maybe I’m taking a little poetic license here, but I believe that if there’s one message my Mother would want to leave everyone with, it is to take responsibility for your life. Don’t blame others and don’t blame your circumstances. When necessary, focus on improving yourself. That’s what she did and the results speak for themselves.

So, yes, she was born under a lucky star. But the greatness of her life is that she spread that starlight to everyone she met. Mom was a sharer. She had the purest, most beautiful heart of anyone I ever knew. After her diagnosis of cancer, every time I said goodbye, I whispered in her ear, “I love you forever.”