Delivered August 15 at St. Paul’s Catholic Church, Jacksonville Beach
Hello, I think I know most people here but for those I don’t, my name is Thomas White, Tut White, and I’m Allison’s brother.
First, I’d like to thank all of you for taking the time to come celebrate Allison’s life. Her family appreciates it and I’m sure Allison appreciates it too.
Really, in a lot of ways, it all started here for Allison. She went to first grade right behind us when the school was about a third of its present size. And she received first holy communion in the older church before it was enlarged to its present size.
Allison led a happy childhood with many friends and a loving extended family.
You may have seen the crown my niece Shannon carried to the front of the church. That was the crown of Miss Fletcher, 1969. In her life of achievement and advanture, she was at one time the ultimate California girl and later the most cosmopolitan of New Yorkers, but in her heart she was always Miss Fletcher.
1969 was an exciting and turbulent time in our country, with assassinations, civil unrest and the Vietnam war. But it was also the time of Woodstock, the Moon landing and exciting new changes in music and cinema. The new Miss Fletcher reflected that time.
Previous Miss Fletchers had been regal, demure, placid and reserved. This new, sleeker baby boom model was athletic, funny, smart, approachable, with a special affection for the misfits and the rebels.
She kept that vitality and that special love for the alienated and the lonely all her life. When it came time to face the end, she did it with dignity and courage.
This poem by Henry Van Dyke was in her room at the end -
Gone From My Sight
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says, “There, she is gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Gone from my sight. That is all.”
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at that moment when someone says “There, she is gone,” there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout – “Here she comes!”
