In memory of my grandmother, Sylvia Rebie Redfield (December 14, 1925 - July 28, 2021)

My mother's mother, Sylvia Redfield, great-grandmother to my daughter, mother of 7, grandmother to 14, great-grandmother to 15, died just before 8 a.m., Montana Time July 28, 2021, at a hospital in Glasgow, Mont., at age 95.

Photo by Jennifer Ray Photography

My mother Sylvia Redfield Elliott called me from the hospital.

She was diagnosed with cancer this spring, which is why I and mom took Athena Zelda Nebula Skye Sylvia Diana Fox Graham to Montana in June, so she could meet her namesake.

Grandma Sylvia told me four things when we embraced for the last time:

1. "I'm happy you came" 
2. "I wish I had gotten to know Laura better" (she only met my wife once at Christmas in 2017 and once when when we went to pick up a table, when she was still pregnant.)
3. "I'm happy I got to meet Athena" 
4. "Take care of that little girl"

She also said not to look at her because if she saw how I was crying, she would start crying too. 

Athena only has good memories of Montana, the wide open spaces, the dogs, and great-grandma. 

She was funny, always laughing when she told stories. 

She is the wife of the late Frank "Buster" Redfield aka "Papa" from my poem, "We Call Him Papa". 

They met at the USO. 

She never gave her number to anyone, but on her last day volunteering there, and my grandfather's first day visiting (he was a veteran of both the US Navy and the US Army, which is a story in itself), she gave him hers, figuring nothing would come of it. 

Athena met Sylvia for the first time in June and helped make wedding mints.

He called so many times to ask her out the next day, she said, that her sister just told him to come over in person. They married Dec. 6, 1947.

Frank and Sylvia on their wedding day

Grandma shows my mom the wedding dress in June.

Frank and Sylvia with their first of seven children, Georgia.

She loved literature and poetry, her favorite poet being Langston Hughes, which she said no one would expect given that she was a "little white girl growing up in the segregated South," but she said his work spoke to her. She gave me her hand-annotated "The Selected Poems of Langston Hughes," which she had re-read many times (she had bookmarks at "Sunday Morning Prophesy" "Freedom Train" and "I, Too"). This was a handwritten Hughes poem in the book:

She had an English degree, like me, from Bucknell University. She liked reading my poems and watching me perform slam poetry. 

Over the years she sent me dozens of books on all sorts of topics and children's books for Athena.

The small town of Opheim, Mont., will be dedicating its library in her name.

Like Athena, she loved puddles.

May you never have to explain to a 3-year-old why you're crying.

Sylvia Rebie Redfield

December 14, 1925 - July 28, 2021

Sylvia Rebie Redfield was born to Rebie Sylvia (McElwee) and Frank (Schleif) Slife on December 14, 1925 in Atlanta, Georgia. She passed away July 28, 2021 at the age of 95, in Glasgow, Montana.

She grew up in Atlanta and graduated from Sylvan Girls High School. 

She graduated from Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania with a major in history and political science and a minor in English. 

She had always wanted to be a teacher and taught at a country school in Norcross, Georgia.

While volunteering at a USO she met Frank Redfield, Jr. who was in the Army at the time. 

They dated while she was finishing college and were married December 6, 1947.

He moved the city girl to the country in 1948, and their first child was born in Glasgow in 1949. 

Later in 1949 they moved back to Atlanta where Frank was a policeman and Sylvia was a housewife — adding four more children to the family. 

In 1956, they made the permanent move back to Opheim to run the family farm. 

They eventually added two more children.

In 1987, Frank and Sylvia became snowbirds, spending half the year in Chandler, Arizona. 

Grandma and her three sons, Myron, Les and Alan, from left.

While there, Sylvia volunteered at a school and a hospital in the Patient Pride program and in the pharmacy where they loved her organizational skills. 

Sylvia moved back to Montana permanently in 2018 when her health started to decline, first living with her daughter, Lisa, and then with her son, Myron and Alice Redfield who were excellent caregivers.

Sylvia touched the lives of hundreds of children through her leadership in 4-H, Sunday school, Bible school, story hour, and as the favorite substitute teacher at Opheim School for many years. 

She was an excellent cook and shared not only with her family, but also with friends, relatives, neighbors and lonely GIs from the Glasgow Air Force Base (home of the 476th Fighter Group, 4141st Strategic Wing, 326th Bombardment Squadron and 91st Bombardment Wing from 1957-1976) and Opheim Air Force Station (home of the 779th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron from 1951-1979).

Sylvia was a life-long learner and loved books. She always had a book in her hand or by her side and was often reading two or three books at a time. 

She kept a record of the books she read and that total reached over 2,500 books. 

Grandma with my aunts Lisa Theiven and Alice Redfield, and uncles Myron Redfield and Alan Redfield on the floor of the Montana House of Representatives. Alan served two terms as the District 59 representative from 2013 to 2021. Behind them is the 1912 Charles M. Russell painting "Lewis and Clark Meeting the Flathead Indians at Ross' Hole." Note the snarling dog above the speaker's chair - Russell hated the speaker of the house at the time, so he painted the dog to growl at him.

She volunteered at the community library and worked in the school library and had her own library at home. 

She donated books to the Opheim School library as memorials for community members who had passed away and has donated around 250 books. 

She was thrilled to have the library dedicated to her memory.

She was a woman of faith and a Bible scholar and was very active in the United Methodist Church including being a lay pastor. 

She was also a member of Eastern Star, WIFE, United Methodist Women and the American Legion Auxiliary.

She loved life and always had a smile or an encouraging word. 

She loved babies, music, dancing, poetry and a good joke.

She was preceded in death in 2004 by her husband of almost 57 years, Frank; granddaughter Erin Sheer; infant grandson, Lane Redfield; as well as her parents; sister, Mary Evans and brother, Bil Slife.

Grandma's coffin made by my uncle, Alan Redfield, engraved cross made by my cousin, Logan Redfield.

The cross being prepared by my cousin Logan

Survivors include her seven children: Georgia (Hank) Sheer, Lynn (Al) Cherry, Alan (Laurie) Redfield, Les (Lisa) Redfield, Sylvia Elliott, Myron (Alice) Redfield and Lisa (Marty) Thievin; 13 grandchildren [Jason, Zack, Jodie, Katie, Chase, Haylee, Tatum, Christopher Fox, Nicholas, J.T., Ryan, Logan and Cole]; 15 great-grandchildren and many nieces and nephews.

The library in Opheim, Montana, has been renamed in honor of my late grandmother, Sylvia Redfield, a lifelong bibliophile and one of the most well-read people I've ever known.

"We Call Him Papa" video from the Sedona Poetry Slam

We Call Him Papa
for Frank Leslie "Buster" Redfield
May 14, 1925 - Oct. 31, 2004

we call him Papa
and he could move mountains with his silence

he fathered a family of artists
who knew the value of labor
the efficiency of expression
if it is unclear, rephrase it
if it is unusable, remove it
if it is imperfect, rework it
until it is as much a part of you
as a limb
he never said this
but his life implied it

his stone eyes
edited lies from our speech
before we could speak them
his hands held me tight once
after I sinned
they held me soft
when my father translated himself
into a mythology
I've since ceased believing in
his hands were the tools
with which he spoke through his silence

he carved and crafted rifles
like Stradivarius made violins
and the first recoil
was a symphony
compressed to a split second
he brought wood to life
as though generations of forests grew
to make the right grain
the right feel worthy of his talent

he did not build airplanes,
he built aircraft with the precision of a heart surgeon
knowing a loose screw, one misaligned wire
could transform a craft of beauty
into a coffin
and wife like his into a widow
he made no widows
except one

he crafted art that soared like mechanical angels
and made us feel
how he must have felt with Grandma

even in his absence he scares me
because he was so much more
of what a man should be
than the men I see around me
than the man who fathered me

he was sometimes the machine moving me
he was sometimes the monster under my bed
keeping me from going gently into the night
without fighting the darkness
he was sometimes a giant
stretching hands from horizon to horizon
holding down the sun and moon
and dictating their rising

I am convinced that eastern Montana
is so perfectly flat
in awe of him

we call him Papa
and he could move mountains with his silence

I never heard him say he loved her
not in words
not in a way I could steal
not in a way that the cheap poet in me
could have plagiarized into a stanza
for some mediocre poem unworthy of his memory

I never heard him say he loved her with words

he said it with his eyes

he said it in the stories my mother would tell me
about how he would raise armies and wage wars
just to bring her flowers

he said it with the way he told me
about driving across New York and Pennsylvania every weekend
just to see her for two hours between college classes and curfews

he said he loved her by playing "waltzing matilda" on a harmonica
like he was asking her to dance for the first time,
even after all these years

he said he loved her
by showing us how good man
should love a woman right

we call him Papa
and he could move mountains with his silence

he is the poet
me, his eldest grandson,
I am just his microphone