Eulogy to Arline by Her Husband Ted
Hello, everybody, and thank you for showing your love for Arline.
Today we are gathered to honor and remember a wonderful woman, mommy, and nana: Arline Radillo Greene. She was an especially bright light in so many lives. Walt Whitman captured this radiance in a few words: Some people are so much sunlight to the square inch. I am still bathing in the cheer she radiated. Well — you might crowd this room with emperors, and they would only be in the way, but that lady — O she was a beautiful lady — a wonderful daybeam.
For the first 31 years she was known as Arline Sarah Radillo, the oldest sibling of four kids raised by Albert and Sarah Radillo. In 1978 she proudly adopted the Greene family name. Once grandchildren started arriving, she changed her first name to Nana. Thirteen grandchildren call her Nana.
Arline grew up on the Hispanic side of Santa Ana, where young girls were expected to get married and raise children. Not Arline! She learned English in grade school, enrolled in college, and took side jobs to pay tuition, while her parents changed the locks on their doors in shame.
Teaching bilingual math in grade school, she wrote, produced, and sold the first bilingual math TV show in Southern California: El Mercado de los Numeros, or The Numbers Shop. When KOCE TV in Orange County saw this cute, perky brunette, they recruited her to three of their shows: a biweekly news cast, a summer weekend variety show, and her own Wednesday night talent show, Starboard.
This is when I met the TV personality living in the duplex right below mine. One night she knocked on my door and asked me to change her Sparklets water bottle. Wow! What a doll! For a while I used to wait up late until she returned from a date, so I could spend just a little time with her. Pretty soon we were spending a lot of time together, at which point she had a phone extension installed upstairs so she could pick up when her mom called.
Then one day she announced that when her lease was up, she was moving out. I panicked! So, I did the obvious thing: I asked her to marry me. Nope! Not a divorced man with four kids.
After a week of reflection, I mentioned that I would like to have more kids. Bingo! Before the day was out, we had a wedding date and a honeymoon plan. We invited her folks over to tell them, and when I finally got up the nerve to say we were getting married, her father, Albert, leaned forward and said: Yes! But WHEN?!!!
The rest, as they say, is 45 years of history. I got fired the week we returned from honeymoon, which launched my entrepreneurial career. Despite advice to the contrary, Arline hung in there, and she offered invaluable support during the biotech roller coaster years. We lost count of how many Prime Ribs she cooked in our home to recruit company employees. I’m guessing many of them who met Arline figured that any guy she would select as a husband must not be too bad as a boss.
When Cheryl arrived, Arline ditched her TV career to focus full time on motherhood. She threw herself into this new job, including serving as high school sailing and football team mom. Arline excelled at one of the hardest, most honorable jobs in the world: nurturing and raising children to take their places in the next generation of Americans.
Arline made our homes into kid magnets. She welcomed them all, and she kept our refrigerators stocked from daily shopping trips. Cheryl and Eric’s friends all have fond memories of Arline welcoming them into our lives.
When grandbabies started to arrive, Arline threw herself into being their “Nana.” Nana’s all-time favorite activity was holding babies. For mothers travelling alone, she would volunteer to hold their babies if the need arose, and it almost always did!
Our grandchildren remember Nana for paying them 25-cents to wake her up with a kiss in bed at 9am; for handing out “I LOVE NANA” M&Ms; for Christmas advent calendars to each child; for annually marking their heights on our closet door; for the racks of costumes on the third floor; and for the granddaughter drawer full of special makeup in her bathroom. Nana’s price for doing anything was a hug.
Arline and I led a full life, to say the least! Entrepreneurial failures and successes; boating of every shape and form, often in faraway places; building three houses; but most of all, raising children and then grandchildren, which was Nana’s priority.
Somebody once said, You don’t know how good you’ve got it until it is gone! Oh, how true! Arline and I were such a well-oiled team that we took each other for granted.
And now that team is gone. Her passing has left a huge hole in my life, and in the lives of all those for whom she was Nana or a treasured friend. Such is the passage of life on this wonderful planet.
While clearing out Arline’s desk, Cheryl found this poem with Arline’s signature at the top:
When I am gone, release me. Let me go.
I have so many things to see and do.
You mustn’t tie yourself to me with tears.
Be happy that we had so many beautiful years.
I gave to you my love. You can only guess
How much you gave to me in happiness.
I thank you for the love you each have shown,
But now it’s time I traveled on alone.
So grieve a while for me, if grieve you must,
Then let your grief be comforted by trust.
It’s only for a while that we must part,
So bless the memories within your heart.
I won’t be far away, for life goes on.
So if you need me, call and I will come.
Though you can’t see or touch me, I’ll be near.
And if you listen with your heart, you’ll hear
All my love around you soft and clear.
And then, when you must come this way alone,
I’ll greet you with a smile, and say –
“Welcome Home.”
Arline, your passing has extinguished a bright light, but your life has seeded the world with so many other bright lights. We are forever grateful for the privilege of knowing and loving you. You are living on in all the people whose lives you touched and enriched. We will never stop loving you…