Adapted from the obituary that appeared on April 12, 2004 in the local newspaper.
"Grandma" Roa, 85, passed away peacefully on Wednesday, April 7, 2004 surrounded by her family.
Roa was born August 29, 1918 in Mt. Emmons, Utah to Ira Roy and Lula Annie.
She married Junious November 2, 1938 and he preceded her in death in 1964. She was also preceded in death by her parents and her brother Wayne.
She is survived by her three children, Lee aka Max and his wife Mary, living in Connecticut; Jerry and her husband Jack of Ogden, Utah, and Cora and her companion Kevin of Syracuse, Utah; seven grandchildren*; seven great-grandchildren; and two great-great-children; her sister Flora; and two sisters-in-law, Teddy and Laprial.
Roa attended Utah State University for a year. After marriage, Roa and June travelled from coast to coast building radio towers. During WWII, Roa worked in the shipyards of California while the Navy took June across the seas. In 1946 they started their family and moved to Ogden where Roa raised their children and also managed a number of local restaurants. From Sept. 1961 until July 1980, she worked in the Girls Home, located at the Utah State Youth Development Center. From April 1981 to May 1984, Road served as a Senior Companion Volunteer with the Weber County (UT) Department of Aging and Volunteer Services. After her second retirement, she worked in local grocery stores as a product demonstration lady and later helped make assignments to other that did the same service. During her retirements years, she worked on crafts and paintings, and traveled to see family and friends around the country before her health restricted these activities.
Graveside services will be held on Tuesday, April 13, 2004 at 1 p.m. at the local cemetery.
*including my Uncle Jack's daughter Pam and her children
Some of this information I didn't know until I read her a draft of the obit. Grandma Roa was a Rosie? Grandma helped build radio towers? Who knew!? I knew she was a demo lady (I miss demo ladies), but didn't know about the restaurants management.
Sadly, while informative, obits always are too brief to include everything about a person. Things like:
~Roa liked to paint. We have her various oil paintings and ceramic pieces scattered throughout the family. The nativity scene that she did for my folks? This is me putting dibs in for it!
~Roa kept birds -- or the birds kept her, we're not sure. No comments on the birds. They were a bit fowl.
~She liked to have the television on (on a high volume) all the time. She watched The Price is Right, and other game shows, for HOURS. Soap operas? Also a fan. I remember her visiting CT during the hey day of Luke and Laura, and me trying to practice the piano in one room while she watched the soaps in another.
~If you mentioned (just politely, in passing) that you liked something junk food related, say Twix, if she had them on one visit, those Twix would always be around the next time you came.
~If Grandma's front door was open, that meant she was up for the day. Don't try to visit until the door was open and her morning beverage(s) consumed.
~Speaking of beverages, I am the third generation with a bad soda habit. It skipped from Roa, to Grandmary/Mom, to me.
~Roa was an avid reader -- of trashy, trashy, trashy romance novels. She got them through book of the month subscriptions, and they were in piles in her bedroom and in the closets. She would keep them, and they would some how come home with me in later years. It was fun watching Dad squirm as he had to cancel those.
~For someone who didn't like to talk about the past, it was amazing what was squirrelled away in boxes in the closet. Pictures, trinkets, postcards, jewelry, memorabilia - so many stories, so much information - so many mysteries.
You'll note that the was nothing about a funeral here. That was on purpose. Although raised LDS, Grandma Roa wasn’t particularly what you would call church-going religious later in her life, and didn't want a churchy funeral.
Sadly, living as she was in the heartland of Mormonland, there were some things that Roa just couldn’t escape. For the last number of years, she was surrounded by missionaries. She lived below countless pairs of energetic young men who tromped up and down the back stairs in her apartment house. Although ambivalent about my brothers going on their missions, and most memorably stating “I don’t think I like that” about J being sent to Brazil, she did support them. When Dad was first called as Bishop and then as Stake President, she could keep her “end up” with her sisters and their kids, and their various Church positions. While not active, her Relief Society visiting teacher was there for her through the last, tending to our family with meals and a sincere, I believe, show of emotions at the wake.
See, no obit could truly accommodate all of that.
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