Evelyn Nadine Sullivan Wright

One year ago, yesterday, my grandmother, a child of the depression and a faithful wife of 68 years passed from this world. 96-A long life, and well-lived. Without fanfare and due to unwelcomed circumstances, we spread her ashes in the deep sand high on top of Antelope Mesa without saying the proper goodbyes. We scattered her on same hill where we threw the ashes of her husband, Duane Wright, 12 years earlier.

Evelyn Nadine Sullivan, was born to Ted and Hazel Sullivan, on June 30, 1925 near Fowler, Colorado. Now, this is not to be confused by my side of the “Sullivan” family, as my father’s lineage is not relation to my grandmothers. In fact, three sets of Sullivan’s, all unrelated and originating from different parts of the country settled in southeast, Colorado yet married into the Wright family north of Boone, Colorado. But, that is a story for a different time, maybe for a book.

I have to preface this by saying that the Sullivan’s were farmers, people of the land. Their sustenance came from what they grew on the farm, in the garden and out on the prairie. They were tough, and they taught that same toughness to their kids, especially my grandmother Evelyn. Her reputation preceded her.

When I say that her reputation preceded her, I meant it. She was known far and wide for many things, including her beauty, her cooking and her candidness, but she was especially known for her toughness. Grandma was no nonsense, stern, serious and some would say kind of mean. Of course, many people of that era were tougher than nails because they had to be, just to survive and my grandmother was no different. Life in those days was not easy, admittedly however, there was a genetic component to her countenance. Her mother, Hazel, was also a tough woman. In fact, I’ve heard stories of Hazel nearly chopping her foot off in negative thirty-degree weather while cutting wood, to which she just wrapped it up and continued the job……barefoot. Also, Evelyn beat up a bully in elementary with her brand-new lunch pail for picking on her older sister, Betty. Hazel told Evelyn “I will buy you a new lunch pail every day, if you beat that kid up.” Grandma Evelyn once beat up her high school principal for continuing to cut in the lunch line, “I warned him not to send me to the back of the lunch line and I meant it!” is what she told me later in life. In my look of disbelief, my grandfather confirmed the story saying, “I was standing right there watching in delight!” He said by the time the event was over the principal no longer had sleeves and was bleeding from his nose profusely...he went to the back of the line and never cut again. Once, when she was washing her car at the local car wash, a man came up and tapped her on the shoulder, I assume needing money, and it scared her into a frenzy which left the gentleman on the ground, wacked over the head with the pressure washer. My own mother, Linda, always said that the last thing you wanted to do was startle grandma Evelyn.

I believe, my great-grandmother Hazel is probably one of the reasons Evelyn was so tough. None-the-less, it didn’t change life’s unfair circumstances that are thrown out sometimes. My grandmother often told stories of and bragged on her brother Jack who was tragically killed by a lightning strike at 16 years old. And no doubt life hardened her at the death of her 2-year-old son JD. JD was run over by a tractor early one morning when he followed my grandpa Duane out. Evelyn only talked of the story one time to me, in which she said she was throwing eggs at my grandpa trying to get his attention as he backed the tractor out of the shed. She said that she had to tell my grandpa to slow down as they headed to the hospital before they all died. All the while she held JD’s lifeless body in her lap. She told him it was too late and they changed direction and headed straight to the morgue. They buried JD on the prairie in a small cemetery that my grandmother Lela Wright, donated to the community. Too poor to buy a headstone, the location of the grave has long been forgotten. I’ve always told my own mother, that was certainly one of the reasons she was so hard. I never saw grandma Evelyn cry, and neither has my own mother. I can’t say that wouldn’t make me hard too.

Certainly, there was more to this woman than fist-fights and tragedy. Once, when I was helping a neighbor ship an old cowboy came up to me and said, “hey, ain’t you Evelyn Wrights grandson” to which I replied yes. He continued on and told me about how rich those Sullivan’s were from Oklahoma oil and that those three girls were the prettiest girls in the state. “But they wouldn’t none take a second look at me back in high school.” I agreed that they were beautiful, even in their old age. But, I was more interested in hearing about this Oklahoma oil! When I asked my grandmother about it, she laughed and said that her uncle was in the oil business back in the early century down in Oklahoma, but when the oil bust came, the uncle hung himself. The old cowboy who was sweet on my grandmother, even sixty years after high school, never had a chance with her.

Speaking of beauty. It is true that Evelyn and her sisters Betty and Patte were and still are beautiful women. Betty and Patte are still living and all of them were married to their sweethearts over sixty years. To this day, people talk about how pretty their hair was and how well kept they always were. And it’s true. Grandma Evelyn was a proud woman who always looked her best. Admittedly, looking her worst was better than most peoples best. It wasn’t something she strived for, she just was. She didn’t brag about it, pride in ownership required her to “do it right.” That was included in the rules and work ethic she passed on to her children. Grandma was a perfectionist and she expected perfection, especially when she was teaching her daughters to sew. My mother still tells me today, that if her sewing didn’t satisfy grandma, then you took it all apart and “did it right.” Even when I was in high school at CCHS, the Home Economics teacher told me about my grandma teaching her girls to sew. “You know Shad, every one of those girls could teach this course,” is what I remember her telling me. Looking back on it now, that teacher must have been old!

Truly, however, my grandmother’s reputation as a cook was what set the true precedence. Far and wide, she was known for her made from scratch home cooking. She was farm to table, when farm to table wasn’t a thing. Gathering the eggs, milking the cows, separating the cream, churning the butter, growing the garden, canning all summer and then butchering a hog and a beef was not something special at her house. It was just part of life! I can still hear her telling all of us kids on chicken killing day to “get those chickens dunked and plucked!” And, I can still smell that smell and hope to heck I never have to pluck a chicken again. Oddly, every time we butchered chickens we had fresh fried chicken and mashed potatoes for lunch, even more odd, I can remember how much we all loved it and how us kids would fight for the wish-bone, or what we called the pulley bone. Being married to a rancher and a dry land pinto bean farmer, you can bet we had beans at every meal and to this day I can’t stand pinto beans, but my favorite meal that she made was canned beef. We killed the beef, cut it up and she would can chunks of the round and then down the road she would fry it up like chicken and we all ate it like we were starving to death. I go places today and have coconut cream pie and everyone just whales about it, and I’m like…this isn’t Evelyn’s pie. Not even close. My grandma used fresh whole cream in a lot of recipes and she always told me, “That was key.” Still, I can hear the back screen door slam and I can smell that bread coming from the kitchen, right down to the hamburger buns… she made everything. When I asked her how she learned to cook she told me my great-grandmother Ressa Wright taught her a lot and her Aunt Myrtle Dickson. I supposed, cooking for the bean threshing crew helped a bit too. She once told me that during bean harvest, the minute the breakfast dishes were done, she started cooking for lunch and the minute the lunch dishes were done, she started cooking for supper. It was not unusual to cook for twenty men, who slept in the barns, during bean harvest. I assume that’s where my own mother gets her skills to cook for large crowds. I do believe, that in my life, my grandma Evelyn’s cooking is second to nobody. All five of her daughters are excellent cooks, but none of them compared to my grandma Evelyn. I did experience very close quality of cooking by a ranch-wife and neighbor at Arthur, Nebraska named Shari Jensen once. But I would hate to compare the two. Certainly, there are traditions that came from my grandmother’s kitchen that have been passed on to her children. My hope is that their children carry them on, but it’s highly doubtful. No doubt, some of my most profound memories of grandma and grandpa are at the dining room table asking questions about the past. I could never get enough of it.

It was once said, that there was only one man that could put up with Evelyn Wright and that was my grandpa Duane. And that statement was true. Even though his 6’4” stature was, at times, overwhelming he was a calm and patient man. He was hard-working and steady and he expected the same from all of us. Work, that’s what he expected and so did grandma. His height and calm demeanor balanced her short stature and fire-like temper. In fact, they were opposites. She was bossy, but he was the boss. Grandpa respected grandma and her wishes, but when he spoke everyone listened...for the most part to include grandma. Once, when grandma made scrambled eggs and beef brains for breakfast and she was ordering everyone to “eat what you took,” my grandpa finished up and said, “now Evelyn, we don’t need to have that again.” And they never did. I remember staying with grandma and grandpa one time when my folks went to the National Finals Rodeo. I was so excited because breakfast was always so good! One morning it was chicken fried steak and biscuits and gravy, but when I bit into that steak I found it was liver! Of-course the, “you took it, you eat it” came alive and I couldn’t eat it. I told her she would have to whip me. Grandpa got a good chuckle out of that. I went with grandma and grandpa a lot. We traveled a lot of places together and I can remember up in their seventies driving down I-70 and they switched drivers while going down the road. Grandpa told me she was the only woman he ever loved and I know its true. I doubt she would ever say that because that wasn’t her way, but I do remember when he was dying she got down in her back bad and I was telling him about it, as he was in the rest home. He said, “Shad, she doesn’t know how to cry and that’s the way her sadness comes out.”

When grandma and grandpa got married, he immediately went to the service and sent her to live with his parents on their ranch. The parents, Dhu and Ressa Wright, still had two children at home and grandma was growing sick of living with them. So, when grandpa got home he found her a house on the prairie. It was a clapboard house with no claps between the boards, so you could see right through. No water, no electricity and when he asked her if she could live there she said, “we’re moving today!” Newspapers kept the snow from coming in so bad, but they made it a home. Grandma once told me that she was so excited the day he brought her home a gasoline powered iron, then a wash-tub, then a gas-powered Frigidaire. They were coming up. Through the years they had 7 children to include JD and then the youngest named Tammy. Tammy was closer to my age, which meant that Patsey, the oldest daughter and my mother Linda and grandma Evelyn were all pregnant at the same time! At the time, great-grandmother Hazel was still alive and she told grandma Evelyn that she should be ashamed of herself, “getting in that shape at her age.” All told, grandma and grandpa had children in the house 42 years. That made Tammy the same age as her niece and nephew Kristy and Brett. Well, they all went to 2A schools scattered across southeast, Colorado and in 1986 grandpa and grandma had a daughter, 3 granddaughters and 2 grandsons playing basketball in the Colorado State Tournament, representing 3 schools. I seriously doubt any other grandparents in the Nation can claim that. It was kind of special, but certainly caused some riff-raff in the family during those years.

Grandpa and grandma started life together in a clap-board house. And they ended life together in a beautiful new home. But they lived a humble life. Worked hard to earn an honest living, didn’t buy extravagant things. Always drove a chevy truck and a Volvo car, to save on gas. Didn’t eat out, why would they? But mostly, they were my connection to the early days. Their faces and the sounds that surrounded us are still fresh in my mind and if I could only go back…I would ask a million more questions.

I didn’t get to say good-bye to my grandma Evelyn, but I promised myself I would write a story in her memory and her honor. I am grateful that Thea and Beatty met my grandmother, for, she is a part of who I am and some things we don’t choose. She was not a perfect person, who among us is? But she did positively influence my life and for that, I am thankful.

Today, I treasure the things grandpa and grandma taught us and many of those things we still use to provide for our families. Hard-work, self-reliance, and Jesus…

Copyright © Shad Sullivan