Goodbye to a Woman of Style

My mother in the middle with beautiful Aunt Elva to the right, and their friend Juanita - styling the latest early ‘50s style.

My Aunt Elva died this week.

She wasn’t really my aunt, but when we were growing up, it wasn’t ok to address adults by a first name, and our families were too close for me to call her Mrs. Newdome.

 Aunt Elva was a force in Mansfield – a musical force in the education of hundreds of string students, first in the Mansfield Public Schools, and then after marrying Uncle Bill and having her children, an important impact in the lives of her private lesson students.  

But Aunt Elva’s relationship to my family is much deeper than that. In fact, if not for Aunt Elva, my mother and father may never have met.

My mother was hired by the Mansfield Public Schools to build a music program in the early 1950s and one of her first hires was a beautiful young woman named Elva Welday. Mom knew she wanted our schools to have a string program and Miss Welday knew how to make that happen.

As was common in that day, Miss Welday lived in a boarding house with a few others, including my father, Art Alleshouse. Apparently, my dad had lived in the house longer than other boarders, so he had the best or largest room in the house.

Well, Aunt Elva really wanted that room and also thought my father needed to meet a nice woman. So, one day, she invited my mom to visit in her boarding house when she knew my dad would be practicing his clarinet in the living room – which she said he did on a regular basis. She walked my mother into the room, interrupted dad and said, “Art? I want you to meet my friend Dee Blue. Dee plays piano and I’m sure she’d love to accompany you any time, right Dee? In fact, why not now?”

At which point, she turned and walked out of the room leaving my future parents speechless.

Being a somewhat dutiful sort, my mom sat at the piano and did indeed play along with my father for a while - and that brief introduction led to a first date and then a 30+ year marriage.

Aunt Elva was quite proud of that introduction and repeated the story often. She was particularly pleased that Dad soon left the boarding house and she quickly claimed his room as her own.

Aunt Elva and my mom exchanged kids for lessons – meaning I learned violin and Bill learned piano. They were key players in the musical bubble that framed my formative years in Mansfield along with what we would today call the key influencers like Mr. Chiudioni, Mr. Hall, Don Bernhardt, Dick Wink, and organizations like the Little Mozarts and the Ohio Music Teachers’ Association.

This will be a week for memories of Aunt Elva and her impact on our lives – mixed with a large dose of personal gratitude that she was clever enough to get my father’s larger room in the boarding house by introducing him to my mother.