If my grandmother were alive today, she would be celebrating her 100th birthday.
Born June 14, 1926, Evelyn Mae Fitzgerald Boozer entered the world before humans had flown into space, before the Civil Rights era, before computers, the Internet, and mobile phones, before commercial jet travel, before television was common in American households, before antibiotics were widely available.
She experienced the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, the development (and use) of the atomic bomb, and the entire span of World War II before she turned 20.
As a young adult, she became a mother just as the United Nations was formed, the Cold War began, America’s interstate highway system opened, and rock and roll took over the airways. In her 40s, she watched Martin Luther King, Jr. – a man who shared a middle name with her husband – lead a human awakening that stirred turmoil in her soul as a white Southern lady who also longed to live like Jesus.
She watched the Apollo 11 crew land on the moon and take that “one giant leap for mankind.” She wiped her brow and dabbed her neck as she watched coverage of the Vietnam War and nationwide protests flicker across her living room, now for the first time in color and even more real.
In her late 40s, on March 10, 1973, she watched her husband, David Luther Boozer, walk their daughter, Suzanne Elizabeth, down the aisle toward their new son-in-law, James (“Jim”) Cooper Frazier. At 52, she met her first grandchild and namesake, Evelyn Rose Frazier, and at 57, her second granddaughter, Sarah Katherine Frazier, named after her grandmother, Sarah, and her niece, Katherine.
She felt the unrelenting momentum pushing her to evolve her secretarial work from analog to digital and ultimately decided this was one change she wasn’t going to make. So she poured her talents into her church, where it was still perfectly acceptable to type the weekly bulletins and stack the offering coins into paper deposit rolls – red stripes for pennies, blue for nickels, green for dimes, and orange for quarters.
During her sixth decade, she lost her husband of nearly 50 years and made a new home in Jim and Suzanne’s basement apartment, specially renovated just for her. She hosted friends for card games, walked the carefully placed stepping stones beneath the shade of the backyard pine trees, and loved her two lapdogs in succession – first Sport, then Sparky – most often while sitting in her favorite spot, the swing on her screened-in porch, where she could hear the birds and watch the sunlight trickle through the leaves.
She took an RV road trip to Alaska with her sister, Alma, and brother-in-law, Hugh. She flew to Israel to walk the streets of Jerusalem, Switzerland to see the Alps, and Ireland to kiss the Blarney Stone.
As 24-hour cable news came on the scene and the sounds of dial-up Internet and AOL mail chirped upstairs, she was more comfortable with the pages of Readers’ Digest and reruns of Andy Griffith, Cheers, and M.A.S.H.
She watched with pride as her daughter returned to school to earn her professional certification as a Court Reporter, eventually rising to become president of the Alabama Court Reporters Association. She applauded her son-in-law who turned his unfortunate termination from corporate downsizing into an opportunity to own his own business. As America’s foreign and domestic policy further evolved in the wake of September 11, 2001, she doted on her granddaughters and watched them grow into young women, both meeting their future husbands while attending college, which was a first all its own. She watched her grandson-in-law, Daniel, sign up to serve his country as an Air Force JAG – the first military serviceperson in the family since her husband, David, who served in the Army Air Corps and then the Reserves.
She danced the night away at her youngest granddaughter’s wedding in 2003. Her oldest granddaughter made her a great-grandmother in 2006, when her great-grandson, James David, was born and given a double moniker steeped in meaning. In short succession, James David’s sisters arrived – Emma Katherine, followed by Anderson Elizabeth, and then Finley Evelyn.
She watched Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and Katie Couric announce advances in cancer treatment, heart surgery, and organ transplants. She saw letters take a backseat to email. She saw landline telephones become novel and cell phones take charge. She gasped with awe during her first Skype video call, realizing she could speak to her granddaughter, Katherine, in real time, face to face, from five states away. “I never thought I’d live to see the day,” she marveled.
Two months after her 87th birthday, she left a world that had changed at a rate she never could have imagined.
She left us with her light and love.
Happy Birthday, Gran.
swimming toward the shark 