MY OTHER MOTHER - GOLDIE (DIDI) EVANS

 My Aunt Goldie became my second mother on the day that my parents died. She was just Didi to everyone who was close to her. Didi had always been a part of my life because she was my mothers youngest sister. She divorced her first husband Lee Roy Anderson in the early 1950's and as long as I could remember had been living with my grandparents. We spent many hours visiting our grandparents at their house on North Fifth Street until they moved in 1955 to Mckennie Avenue in East Nashville. Didi had two boys, my cousins Roy and Alton. She worked for years at Southern Bell telephone company as a telephone operator and later as a clerk on Douglas Avenue and Gallatin Road in East Nashville. Southern Bell eventually became South Central Bell. Mckennie Avenue was where my family was living temporarily when my father shot my mother and killed himself on Wednesday January 16, 1963. That afternoon Didi, along with all my aunts and uncles on both sides of our family met at Phillips-Robinson Funeral home to make funeral arrangements for my parents. 

 One of the owners, Gale Robinson, who was also a prominent lawyer at the time started out by asking the most important question of the day. He said that a decision needed to be made about the children. He asked who was going to raise my brother Mark and I. Didi told me that for a long moment there was an awkward silence. Finally she spoke up and said that she would take us. She explained to Gale that she had been babysitting us anyway over the last few months since my mother had been covering for my father at the drugstore. Because of daddy's mental condition he couldn't be depended on to keep the store open. Although our relationship was rocky from time to time over the six years that I lived with Didi I can't think of anyone else in the family I would have rather lived with. My Aunt Viola and Aunt Margaret were in the best financial position to take us in but speaking for myself I don't think I would have been comfortable living with them. Gale Robinson would become the attorney representing us in probate court and setting up our trust. He would eventually become a Nashville judge and die in a car accident in 1995. 

Didi was an attractive 36 year old woman in the prime of her life when she became our guardian. She was a single woman with two children and now she was taking on two more. It really blows my mind today when I think about what a selfless act of courage that was. On top of that we were all dealing with intense grief during that time. Didi also suffered the trauma of finding my parents bodies and she had to deal with that for the rest of her life. I loved Didi but she wasn't my mother. Dealing with the grief of losing my parents and having a new mother figure in my life, we were bound to butt heads. My mother and Didi were as different as night and day. Both had the same good heart but they were vastly different in temperament. Mother had a meek, sweet spirit and never spoke ill of anyone, much like my daughter Melanie. Didi was feisty and easily offended. God help you if you made her mad because she could hold a grudge. It was kind of like Scarlett Ohara verses her cousin Melanie in Gone With The Wind. Not to imply that Didi had the character of Scarlett Ohara but definitely the temperament. Didi was the epitome of class and was always prim and proper. Even in old age she was still an attractive woman. She had men chasing after her for most of her life and she always had a boyfriend. In the early 1900's my grandfathers brother and his wife died of tuberculosis within a few weeks of each other leaving their three boys orphaned. Two of them were sent to an orphanage in Nashville and one to a Memphis orphanage. This could have been our fate. 

 When I returned from Turkey in 1971 I decided to become my brother Mark's legal guardian so he could live with Debbie and I in Colorado Springs. After going to court in order to have Mark's guardianship transferred I will never forget the reaction of the Social Security attorney who came by my in-laws house in East Nashville. He was transferring Mark's SSI over to me in order to provide for Mark while he lived with us. When I asked him if it was okay to use Mark's SSI on household bills he said yes that is what it was for. I told him that I was just curious because Didi had always put our SSI in our bank accounts each month and was raising us on her own earnings. The lawyer was dumbfounded. He told me that in all of his years of practice he had never known anyone to do that. Because of Didi she had provided us with a nice little nest egg when we both turned 21. Didi worried about us like we were her own children and always proudly introduced us to strangers as her boys. When Debbie and I were married we had been fighting and I childishly did not invite her to our wedding but because she loved me she came anyway. I was glad that she did and felt very small for not inviting her. She was always there for the important events of my life such as my graduation, my children's graduations, my childrens birthday parties and she loved my wife Debbie like a daughter. She tried her best to fill the hole in my heart and because of that I always tried to call her on a regular basis which she appreciated. Didi went to be with the Lord in May of 2012 and I will miss her until the day that I die.