I first met my grandma before I was old enough to start forming memories. She and my auntie Janice flew out to Hilo, Hawai'i when I was just about two weeks old. She loved telling me the story again and again about how during their stay, at dinner the entertainment host asked for the oldest person in the room to come up to the stage. Then when he asked for the youngest, Janice stood and lifted me up and said, "Here she is!"
Looking back, I think the reason my grandma loved telling me that story so much is because that was the moment that Irmalee Louise Jones Walker - already a devoted wife and mother of four, a retired career woman and former mayor, a true friend and dear sister, a community servant and all around beautiful class act of a lade - that was the moment she became what she always made me to feel, was the proudest role of her life - a grandma! You see, from the moment she flew across an ocean 30 years ago to welcome her first grandchild to the world, to her move to Bishop after my cousin Ali was born, to her final trip to Hawai'i for my sister's doctoral graduation - she devoted the later part of her life to making sure us granddaughters knew just how much we were loved.
She and my grandpa came to Kona every spring during my childhood for us to spend Spring Break with them. They taught us how to swim, how to play cribbage, gin, hearts, poker... "Ante and you won't be so rich," my grandpa would always say.
My sister and I were fortunate enough to also spend summers in California with our grandparents, first in Bellflower, then later in Bishop. It was in Bishop that at the age of 14 my grandma took me for my first driving lesson. "Just don't tell your grandpa," she said. "This is against the law."
My grandmother taught us how to cook, how to sew, how to play the piano. I distinctly remember the day she sat us down at the dining room table and spent an hour showing us which utensils went where and the proper way to pass the serving plates.
More significantly though, she and my grandpa taught us the importance of an education, the importance of independently following your dreams, and most of all, the importance of family. When I look around at my sister and cousin, my dad and my aunties, not only have we all graduated from college, traveled the world, and went off to do whatever called each of us, but through it all we have remained a unit. We laugh together, cry together, get in incredible arguments and debates like only a Walker knows how - yet still, always a family. And for that I am eternally grateful to both my grandmother and grandfather.
Today, we honor Irmalee Louise Jones Walker and the legacy she left behind. Where ever you are, grandma, you should be very proud. I know I am.
(from Memorial Service April 11, 2015)
