Laurel Ulrich Tribute

">Bonnie didn’t want a funeral. She wanted a celebration. So that is what we are going to have today, even though it is hard not to shed a few tears. I am going to celebrate Bonnie’s life with her own words. A few weeks ago I spent a wonderful day listening to her tell stories she wanted to share with her children and grandchildren. Some of what I am going to tell you today comes from that interview. The rest comes from an interview Clayton Christenson did with her in July 1999.

Bonnie knew I was coming with a recorder, and she knew exactly what she wanted to say. Here is how she began: “We are going to talk about the life of Bonnie and Gerald Horne. They were married in June 1959 on a sunny day in Salt Lake City, Utah,”

I think it is significant that she started her life story with her marriage. For most of us here it is hard to imagine Bonnie without Gerry. They were—and are—a team.

Bonnie’s stories about her early marriage and the years she and Gerry spent raising their five children are filled with funny stories about would-be disasters that turned out to be a lot more fun in memory than they probably were when they happened. She told me about their romantic honeymoon at Lake Tahoe when she broke out with the measles, and about the summer they spent in a “sweet little cottage” in Salt Lake City where she nearly starved Gerry by serving him beautiful salads, and not much else, for dinner. Finally he said he wanted something more—maybe meat and potatoes along with the salad. At the end of the summer, they headed for New York so Gerry could complete his final year at Columbia University.

Here is how she remembered that transition:

“That summer he had a job selling encyclopedias down in southern Utah, so I really didn’t see very much of him, so when we left for New York I was looking for new and exciting things to happen, and when we got to New York—we had packed our car tight, and had a little apartment that Gerald had already found for us, or that Jack had found. When we got there in the evening , we decided not to unpack our car. But in the morning when we went down to unpack our car, somebody had already unpacked our car for us, an everything--every single thing-- had been taken from us. So…we didn’t have anything left. So we had to do a little bit of shopping. It was kind of sad because it was a lot of our wedding gifts and a lot of our clothing. We had a cute little apt, a one bedroom, with a tiny, tiny kitchen. It was a half a block away from Central Park, big windows that we could open and look out on below, and if we stuck our heads way out the window we could see Central Park.”

With her marriage Bonnie had changed her name from Pentelute to Horne. With the move to New York, she made an equally dramatic shift in her identity. Although her parents named her “Bonnie Alice,” when she was four or five years old her uncle gave her a name that stuck with her through high school. Here’s how she explained it: “He thought I looked like Mickey Mouse. He called me ‘Mickey Mouse.’ Then ‘Mouse.’ Then finally Mickey.’ My friends in junior high and high school all called me Mickey. Very few people knew my name was really Bonnie. When we moved back to NY, Gerald said it is time to start calling you Bonnie. So, lo and behold, I became Bonnie.”

So in marrying Gerry, she lost her surname but recovered her given name. More dramatic changes followed:

In New York, “I got a job at Lord & Taylors as floor manager’s secretary, and Gerald went off to Columbia. While working at Lord & Taylor’s I found out that we were pregnant. The women were very upset with me because they thought I’d ruined my husband’s career, how dare I get pregnant, people as young as I did not get pregnant! I told them I really wasn’t very young, I was 22. But they said people didn’t even get married in New York at 22. So I was kind of an outcast, and yet they were very kind to me and kind of watched over me.”

Bonnie Michelle was born on Gerald’s graduation day. “Gerald’s parents came back and my mother came back. My mother came back to take care of me, and Gerald’s parents came for the graduation. Early that morning, the pains started coming, and I said ‘I’m going to Gerald’s graduation.’ Gerald said he thought not. I said, ‘I think I’m going.”’But as the pains got worse, he said he was taking me to hospital, and I agreed. He left my mother with me, and he took his parents on to graduation Cute Michelle was born, and when he got back from graduation, there she was. The nurses had curled her hair and put a pink bow in. (Laurel: He couldn’t have stayed anyway, could he? ) No, not in those days. Everybody went back to the one bedroom, front room, one bathroom, small kitchen apartment, and had a good time.”

That fall the Hornes moved to Massachusetts, where Gerry began graduate study at M.I.T. Michelle soon had a little brother, named Scott, then a sister Leslie, who was born the night they moved into their house on Palfrey St. Finally Allison and Tristan joined the family. Here is what Bonnie had to say about the friendships she formed during the years she was raising her children:

“I can just remember the Franklins, the Ulrichs, Zabriskies—I’m trying to think who else was in that group of children that ran wild! Going to Bernardston and gathering and the kids running through the woods and having a good time, blocking off the stream, building damns, painting the house. I think some of the kids enjoyed that—some did, some didn’t. But for the most part, I think most of the kids enjoyed that. Going over to the old covered bridge. Oh, the Kohlers, the Kohlers! Susan and Brian. Kind of the sixties attitude. . . . Nobody wants to mention those days. The long hair, the braided hair. . . . [Laurel: the long dresses?] Yes—which had nothing to do with the Mormon Church, that is just the way people dressed.”

And, of course, many of those good times also involved construction work—times when the men pitched in to demolish a wall, lay a floor, renovate a bathroom, build a house, while the kids hauled brush, carried boards, scrubbed walls—or ran wild. In 1999, Bonnie told Clayton Christensen that her children sometimes “complain now that we worked them to death. We had them do a lot of work around the house. It [was like having] a lot of children on the farm. We had the big yard that had to be taken care of. You just had to get so many hours of working around the house, and then I said I’ll give so many hours to you in playing, which we did. I always felt that they had to be very responsible. They’re all good workers to this day. They do know how to work, which I would say a lot of their friends don’t know how to.”

The work parties extended beyond the family to the Church. Lots of you have heard about Beginner’s Boston, the guidebook that the Cambridge Ward Relief Society published in the 1960s. There are many versions of how that happened, but I’m here to tell you that it happened on Bonnie’s watch. She was the Relief Society President who spearheaded that project. One of her most important contributions was pulling Gerry into the project as Art Director and Lay-out Manager. So men were involved, too. But the women were in charge, and that was important. We sent the first edition off the printer and before we got the books, they sent us a preview copy. Bonnie looked at it and said, “We’re taking this to the Globe.” I said, “What? Do you really think they would be interested.” She said, “Yes, I’m going to call up and make an appointment and we’re going to take it in to show them.” So she and I went to see then-columnist Diane White who wrote a rave review. We sold our first 1000 copies before they had arrived from the printer. I think that in successive editions, we published about 20,000 more.

As Bonnie recalled, “The friendships that you started to make through doing these projects together have been friendships that have lasted up until now. It has amazed me that my very, very good friends come from the Church and come from this period of time that started with Beginner’s Boston.”

But it wasn’t just the famous projects that built those friendships. It was all the little things people did together. Bonnie remembered “doing some fairly silly things such as seeing Gretha Petersen, Betty Mandarino, and I out being cheerleaders for our children’s basketball teams.” When Bonnie was part of the group, everybody felt important and everybody had fun!

[I didn’t take time to read this part, but thought I would add it here, from Clayton’s interview, Bonnie’s comment on Girls’ Camp: “I cooked most of the time that my girls went to girls camp. I was in the kitchen. I loved that. I loved girls camp. It was choice. Then Irene and I were co-directors for a couple of years. They like that support from one another. That’s how I see it. Plus, it isn’t all geared toward earning merit badges or whatever. You get a variety of things going. And the food is great. It really is. Let’s face it, they like to eat, and so do the counselors. That was a positive thing about girls camp. I think the people that went really, at least during the time I was there, enjoyed it. It wasn’t something they dreaded doing. They liked it.”]

And of course, there were the famous clambakes! Here is Bonnie’s account of one of those almost disasters that have provided so much amusement in retrospect: “We were talking about the clambake. It was very different from what the clambake is now. In fact, Judy Dushku was telling a story the other night of us following Gerald in a truck that he bought for a dollar. He had retread tires on it. It was loaded with the food. The tables, grates, and cinderblocks were going down to Horseneck Beach. All of a sudden, the rubber starts to flip off. I panicked, and of course, started to pray a little that we could make it to the clambake. She said that was so funny that day just to see my expression when this started to happen. She was thinking, ‘Are we going to make it?’ We had everything. It was something we made. Gerald said, ‘Do you remember what else happened? The universal joint got on the sand.’ So he had to spend the day fixing the universal joint. But we made it home. Our clambakes at that time were one of the fun things I can remember. Everybody helped with the clambake and with taking things off their truck and building a fire on the sand.”

Here is Bonnie’s seemingly paradoxical comment about those years: “I remember those as very good times. It was a very spiritual time.” A very good time. A spiritual time. That is a comment worth contemplating.

A few months ago, Bonnie was talking to me about how her illness had deepened her spirituality and her love for the scriptures. She said, “I was always active in the Church, but I don’t think I really got it. I was there for the social life.” I have no doubt but what her approach to religion changed over the years, but in my view her ability to invest in people—what she called “social life”—was to the end the core of her spirituality. And among spiritual gifts, isn’t love the greatest?

I am grateful that my life was touched by the love that Bonnie gave so freely to us all.