Mary’s First Annual Memorial Tea

By Sharon Lakey

Mary's table
We felt Mary’s pres­ence all day

Mary Pri­or loved a par­ty. She didn’t call it a par­ty, though. It was a soiree. Per­son­al­ly, I had nev­er heard the word used in every­day con­ver­sa­tion until she let it roll off her tongue, exag­ger­at­ing the accent, dip­ping her shoul­der slight­ly, her eyes sparkling. We were in the Pope Memo­r­i­al Library at the time where she was the librarian.

What does that mean?” I asked.

You’ve nev­er heard of a soiree!” she exclaimed. Right then, she got out the dic­tio­nary and read the def­i­n­i­tion: “an evening par­ty or social gath­er­ing, espe­cial­ly one held for a par­tic­u­lar pur­pose. That’s what I’d like to do for a job,” she said. “Just give soirees.”

Steve Cobb, own­er of the Danville Restau­rant and Inn, came one ear­ly sum­mer day last year and after walk­ing through the rooms, turned and stat­ed, “I’d like to do a tea here as a fundraiser.”

That sound­ed great, and I agreed, but things have a way of snow­ing you under at His­tor­i­cal House. He final­ly took mat­ters into his own hands and in Jan­u­ary announced to the morn­ing cof­fee group at the restau­rant that he would like to pick a date for the tea, around Valentine’s Day. When Steve gets going, he moves fast, and he took many with him on his whirl­wind plan-and-do adventure.

Mary would have loved the tea that was held at His­tor­i­cal House on Feb­ru­ary 13—a real soiree! The plan­ning worked out per­fect­ly with groups of vol­un­teers bring­ing in tables, press­ing table­cloths, set­ting tables, arrang­ing flow­ers, donat­ing door prizes, deliv­er­ing home-baked good­ies, wait­ing tables, wash­ing dish­es, play­ing live music and hang­ing hun­dreds of hand-cut hearts. And in two sit­tings, the cus­tomers arrived, most­ly dressed in red and ready for tea and crum­pets and good con­ver­sa­tion, fill­ing the house to the brim.

On a round, red-draped table, oppo­site the key­board and glow­ing under the tin chan­de­lier, was Mary’s smil­ing pho­to. Dur­ing the event, Pres­i­dent Paul Chouinard, stand­ing near the table and oppo­site Winona Gadapee who was at the key­board, said, “I only wish Mary could see this.”

With­out skip­ping a beat, Winona replied, “Oh, she’s here.”

And, I’m pret­ty sure she was.

We wish to thank all of the vol­un­teers and donors who made the tea a suc­cess. We also wish to thank all the cel­e­brants who hon­ored us by attend­ing. A spe­cial thanks goes to Steve Cobb, who might have missed his call­ing as a general! 

Steve Cobb in the kitchen
Ken Lins­ley, Lyn­da Far­row and Steve Cobb pre­pare for the tea

This arti­cle was first pub­lished in March issue of The North Month­ly.

To view a pho­to album of the tea, click here.

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