Jean Eveline Connelly Cottrell

Here she is...Jeannie with the dark brown hair :)

She was born on September 18, 1924, in Glencoe, Minnesota, to Edward and Elizabeth Connelly. The baby in a family of five children, she has three older sisters: Ruby, Alice and Myrtle, and one older brother, LeRoy.

Through the perils of the Great Depression, the family moved from Minnesota to make a home in Puyallup, Washington...but not without sacrifice.

It became necessary for the two oldest girls to remain in Minnesota with extended family and to finish schooling while the "little ones" were packed up for the journey to the unknown city. Like so many families, the course they thought their life would be taking, was now forever interrupted and changed. With nothing but the hope of work, they arrived to the new home.

Jean didn't realized she came from a "poor family"...she delighted in the simple pleasures of life and understood the reality of making ends meet...of making do, or doing without. She went on to graduate from Puyallup High School and St. Jo's School of Nursing and began working as a Registered Nurse...finding work in Alaska, she too, left home. She told me that in those days young women were either teachers or nurses, and she didn't like school that much.

I wish I could have known her when she was young...but by the time I came into her life, many years had passed.

She married Julian Stearns Cottrell on November 25, 1949, at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Puyallup, Washington. Together they had five children: Daniel Edward (named after her father), David Harry (named after his father), Mary Elizabeth (named after her mother), Beverly Jean (named after herself), and Thomas Jay (named after her husband).

She loved to smile, and sing...off key or on ~ actual words or words of her own making. She always made time to listen, to stories, to jokes, and to dreams. She taught her children the value of hard work, she modeled for them tenderness, and patience; and she gently led them by example into the life they would need to go...and in the end of it all, truth be told, she simply loved life.

The closer the calendar pages turned to March 17...the more her Irish came out. All things Irish were celebrated in March...shamrocks, dinner of corn beef and cabbage, cream puffs tinted with green food coloring all the while the music of old albums of old Dennis Day floated through the air.

I know that everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day...but how blessed am I, that this lovely little "Irish lass" grew up to be my mother :) I am Beverly, and I proudly carry her name.

My mother went Home on Wednesday afternoon, April 24, 1996...I like to think that somewhere on the streets of Heaven, my mother and father are resting in perfect peace, with families now reunited and the struggles of this life long since past.

I can picture her now as she holds her grandson, Paul Michael, by his hand, and together they skip through that beautiful city singing just whatever song she pleases while her Irish eyes smile.