You’ve got to love someone who loves dancing, hates clock watching and always says yes to new experiences. In her home on Sarah Lane, next to the “Schaff” collage made by her granddaughter Ashley and husband Ed are the words “Life, you gotta love it!” Her niece Debby designed the message, and it says a lot about Aunt Faye. She was a liver of life. For example, she learned Mah Jongg when she was almost 80! She loved travel, loved music, loved her family and was loved by many people.
She was Betty’s little sister and at times played the part perfectly. Exasperatingly late to appointments and bridge dates she usually just shrugged her shoulders and flashed that endearing smile. One of her boyfriends presented her with a clock with the twelve numerals piled at the bottom and “Who cares!?” at the Noon position. She proudly hung it in her kitchen. [It is now proudly hanging in our kitchen.]
But she wasn’t irresponsible. As a single mom before it became trendy, she worked and raised her two children with the help of her Missouri farmer parents. Mike and Sharon cherish those chicken coop/ outhouse memories even today.
The family moved back to St. Joe when she married Frank Schaff and was a wife again. Soon Laura was born and the family of five settled on Chatham Lane. But Aunt Faye wasn’t just wife and mother, she was also a business woman. We used to say that she could sell anything if she believed in it. She sold World Books, magazines, and knitting machines. She also worked at the grocery store her brother-in-law Jack managed, taking and filling orders. The store had a free delivery service in those days. In fact the whole family worked in that store to some capacity. I used to help fill orders every high school summer. “Anyone feel like some chocolate?” she’d ask before going down the office stairs to buy a big bag of Brach’s peanut clusters. We’d each have one or two then she’d finish off the bag herself and never gain a pound!
Maybe it was all that energy . It was even apparent over the phone while talking to her customers. “I felt like I knew them really well,” she explained. But one time she got a little too familiar her customer friends. “When a customer called and asked if the store carried 'peas in a can' I told them 'No, we let them just roll around on the floor!' The customer hung up on me and later called Jack to complain.”
Though some of us see St. Joe as a small-minded small town, Aunt Faye was its hospitality ambassador. She loved living there. When more and more of her friends complained about being homesick living in retirement places like California and Arizona she was adamant about never leaving St. Joe. She relished small town living with her network of friends. She often presented her Oklahoma and Seattle families with gifts of Missouri tomatoes and peaches whenever she came to visit. She even brought a “mess of” Missouri morel mushrooms to Seattle for a special dinner. I’ve always envied her cooking, especially her frying. Her secret to fried eggplant, fried morels, fried fish and frog legs is what Aly and Whitey would call “mindfulness.” When she cooks she pays attention to the process. She may neglect the hour but she never neglected the food turning golden brown in her electric skillet.
Every challenge was met with Aunt Faye energy and spunk. That divorce didn’t get her down even though the role of divorcee in those days was a social stigma. Lung cancer surgery didn’t get her down. She visited Laura and Blake not long afterward and with only 1 1 /3 lungs completed a strenuous hike at the most northwestern point of the continental U.S. and Myleodisplastic Syndorom couldn’t stop her. She continued her busy water aerobic, Mah Jongg, bridge and church activities schedule, occasionally boosted by blood transfusions. But after the gift of an Alaskan cruise to her kids the transfusions became too frequent. Once again she met that challenge by declaring she would do it her way. She wanted to be home, surrounded by her family. Though the end may have taken longer than she wished, she gave her friends and family the time to say good bye. We will miss her.
