Audrey Wright
Artist, enthusiast, wife, mother, great-grandmother. Born on Aug. 1, 1925, in Ottawa; died on March 18, 2015, in Dundas, Ont., of congestive heart failure after suffering a broken hip, aged 89.
When she was 16, Audrey Headley met Marshall Wright at their Ottawa high school. He was a football player, she was the pretty redhead who caught his eye, and soon they were going steady. It was 1941 and Canada was at war. Marshall's brother was a pilot in the Royal Canadian Navy who had been shot down and escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp. Marshall's dream was to become a pilot and follow his brother overseas.
After graduating at 17, Marshall enlisted and was soon trained as a sergeant pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force. When his training was finished, and not knowing what the future might hold, the sweethearts decided to elope. Audrey was 19 and their marriage would last 70 years until her death.
Marshall wasn't sent overseas by war's end, but his career as an RCAF pilot took them across Canada and to Kentucky, Virginia, Alabama and Germany. Along the way, he and Audrey raised four daughters, Sandy, Jan, Wendy and Jennifer. When Dad was away on exercises or postings (including a two-year stint in South Korea during the conflict there), Mom handled the home front, overseeing our homework, making our clothes, tending to house repairs, doing volunteer work. While living in Germany, she became a commissioner of Girl Guides on foreign soil for the Girl Guides of Canada. In Fort Rucker, Ala., she served as director of the local Red Cross.
In places such as Germany, Alabama and Petawawa, Ont., she also taught piano and art to children. Mom had grown up with a paint brush in her hand: Her father worked as an interior decorator for an Ottawa department store and taught her to draw and paint as soon as she could reach an easel. When she and Dad lived in Kingston, Ont., she studied art at Queen's University, working in oils, water colours and, later, pastels.
After Dad retired in 1979, ending his career as a lecturer at what is now the Canadian Forces College in Toronto, they moved to the British Virgin Islands. There, Mom grew prize-winning hibiscus flowers and baked countless banana breads for the grandchildren on their many visits. She and Dad took up scuba diving at 60 and night scuba diving at 66; they didn't stop diving until they turned 80, with dive trips throughout the Caribbean and to Fiji.
In their 70s, they bought a home in Dundas, Ont., to be closer to their daughters and grandchildren. They spent the next 10 summers renting cottages on the Bruce Peninsula and in the Haliburton and Muskoka regions. One night, as the rest of the family prepared for bed, son-in-law Mike called out that there was a problem – two bears were blocking his path into the cottage. Mom rushed outside with pots and pans clanging, scaring away the animals. Always a Girl Guide, always prepared! For Mike's next birthday, she presented him with a pastel painting of a black bear, one of her last and finest works.
She showered her family with love; no children or grandchildren were more gifted, funnier or sweeter than her own. One grandson devoted to Charlie Chaplin has a wall filled with her portraits of the actor in various roles. Another grandson who rescued her from computer problems was deemed a "genius" for his expertise.
Audrey leaves beautiful memories of a wonderful life of service to others, delight in nature and celebration of family. How happily she lived from the spirit of the heart.
Jan Burke-Gaffney is Audrey's daughter.