Epilogue

On Wednesday, December 1, 1954, a large crowd of family and friends from the church and community gathered for the funeral. Bishop Frame conducted the program according to the plan Florence herself had prepared in early October. “No detail was omitted,” he said. “I’m sure she knew where she was going, and these requests are hers.” Florence’s brother-in-law, Ancel Adams, voiced the family prayer prior to the funeral. The program that followed was filled with music and the reminiscences of close friends. The stake choir sang, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.” Blaine Johnson sang a solo from Handel’s Messiah, and Roy Halverson played a violin solo. (“Have Roy play anything,” Florence had said. “I would love anything he plays.”) The choir closed with “Oh, My Father,” the very hymn sung by a similar choir 26 years earlier at the funeral of Florence’s mother, Harriet. David Sargent, Paul Edmunds, Barbara Adams and Bishop Frame spoke. Barbara had spoken at Harriet’s funeral all those years ago, as well, and her daughter Lillian was one of Florence’s best friends. The obituary reported that members of the stake high council served as pallbearers and that the members of Florence’s En Avante club acted as flower girls.

Cards and letters poured in. A neighbor, Elaine, wrote that Florence was “a constant source of inspiration to me, a factor in making me live a little better and think a little deeper.” Once back in California, Blanche wrote Elwood to inquire after the children and to send a contribution to the stake meeting house in Florence’s name. Her contribution purchased a memorial clock with Florence's name on it that hung in the stake center.

Once the funeral guests had returned to their own homes, the children were left with the emerging reality that the life they had always known had now fundamentally changed. Seven year old Bob asked Elwood, “Will we still have Christmas Eve this year?” Florence had always made Christmas Eve the highlight of the year, with special foods, beautiful table settings, family, friends and plenty of music. Elwood assured his son that yes, they would celebrate Christmas Eve just as they always had. Perhaps he, like the older siblings, wondered whether that would be possible. But Kristine remembers how the community came together to keep tradition alive:

“Preparations were made for the evening. The root beer was bottled and capped, relatives made sure there was plenty of candy, the ham was baked and tables once again beautifully set. But even more meaningful had been the outpouring of love from residents of the town in the week preceding Christmas. Almost daily people would come to the home with gifts for the children until the space under the tree would no longer hold them all, and there was a trail of presents leading to an adjoining room. Carolers came. One of the children had been sent to pick up some dry cleaning at the local cleaners, and the owner refused to take any money. A local tree seller brought a huge tree, and he also refused any compensation.”

The entire town, it seemed, came together for the family, not only for the funeral, not only for Christmas, but in the months to come. President Sargent said at the funeral that Florence “lived a very, very happy life. It was this service that she rendered which largely was responsible for her happiness.” Florence, he said, embodied the Savior’s injunction that “Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” It seems her spirit of service and love left a deep impression on those around her.

As Florence’s daughter Kristine said once, “When it comes down to the kind of person I’d want to be, if I could be what Mother was, I’d figure I had arrived.”