A Family Gathers For More Than Just Another Birthday
The guest of honor went unnoticed at first.
A young man carried Helen Rodkey down a short flight of steps to the big, brightly lighted basement at Spokane’s Bethany Presbyterian Church, where about 70 of her relatives were giving off a high-voltage family-reunion buzz Friday night. The young man set the thin woman in the pink coat on her feet right inside the entrance. And for just a second, few seemed to realize that the big moment had arrived.
Then they saw her. “Grandma!” Cameras flashed. And then everyone sang, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU …”
Rodkey smiled. The longtime music teacher raised her right hand and made choir-leader motions as her family serenaded her.
They had come from Canada and Texas, from Massachusetts and California. And places in between.
Adults beamed in a way you seldom see outside greeting-card commercials. But a few of the young children seemed awed. And who could blame them? It’s not every day one of your relatives turns 100.
“If you’ll please be seated, we’ll start this clambake,” said a man standing at a microphone.
In truth, the party had been going strong for an hour and a half. Rodkey, who lives in the Spokane Valley, has six children, 21 grandchildren, 45 great-grandchildren and two great-greatgrandchildren. And a lot of them were there, hugging and laughing.
“And your mother is … ?” one woman asked a grade-school boy.
Rarely will you see so much unforced smiling at a gathering at which people are wearing name tags.
“This is my obnoxious cousin,” said one happy woman, introducing a stranger to the Rev. Paul Rodkey, the lumberjack-like pastor at Bethany Presbyterian.
Over near a family tree coded by colors and musical notes, a postersized birthday card was adorned with dozens of signatures and best-wishes. One said it all: “Happy 100!! Wow!!”
Shortly before the brand-new centenarian arrived at the church, the family assembled as a choir and rehearsed a song to be sung at a Birthday Party Part 2 the next day.
“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stay’d on Thee …”
A family of singers, they sounded awfully good. But they hoped to sound great when it counted.
This, after all, would be for Grandma.
, DataTimes MEMO: Being There is a weekly feature that visits gatherings in the Inland Northwest.