George Bernard Shaw said most people live their lives as if they are rehearsals for the real thing. My sister, Beulah Brown Laster, was not one of those people. It can truly be said of her that while she lived she lived fully. At 79, she remained full of the curiosity and enthusiasm that marked her entire live.
My sister never thought that there was anything she couldn’t do.
She was in her mid 30s and the mother of three school-age children when the family moved to a small village in East Anglia after her husband began working in the North Sea oil fields. You could hear accents from Louisiana, Texas or Oklahoma in even the smallest villages.
That was before McDonald’s and Pizza Hut had popped up everywhere, and she thought there ought to be an American style restaurant in the area.
She’d never run a restaurant, or even worked in one, but that did not deter her. After a considerable searching—planning permission was difficult to obtain—she found a suitable site in Great Yarmouth, a vacation destination on the North Sea. You couldn’t just nip down to the butcher or baker to find American style hamburger meat or buns, so she had to find suppliers who could do that.
She opened the Yankee Traveler in 1973, thinking it would attract Americans. It turned out to attract the Brits, too. She sold the restaurant when the family moved from England. The American oil men are gone from East Anglia, but the Yankee Traveler thrives today with a menu that is not much changed from the one she created.
Back in the states, the family moved to Ruston, Louisiana, our home town. Her husband, Howard, was working for Aramco, commuting between Ruston and Saudi Arabia. Their older daughter, Cindy, the mother of two young boys, was stricken with an infection that claimed her life. Sister and Howard took on the boys to raise.
Tragedy struck the family again. Howard had just returned to Saudi Arabia when he suffered a fatal heart attack.
Needing to supplement her income, Sis cast about for something she could do that would pay off.
Building houses seemed an answer.
She had never built a house before, but that did not deter her.
She bought a couple of lots and started building a spec house. It sold before it was completed. Building was pretty much a male enterprise at the time, but she paid her dues, earned respect and progressed to building high-end custom homes. She had a knack for understanding what the people who were having the home built, and she built homes that were unique to those people.
After she retired from building houses herself, other builder recommended her to their clients to help them make decisions on things that would make their homes unique.
At a time when most people were taking it easy, Sis read about the Men’s Shed movement, which aims at giving people who might be isolated a place to work with other people or to just hang out.
The movement is strong in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia. It is relatively new in North America.
Sis decided Ruston needed a men’s shed. She had never tackled anything like that, but that did not deter.
When Sister tries to enlist someone in a project, they usually agree pretty quickly, because they know they will capitulate sooner or later.
Thus, the Ruston Men’s Shed (it includes women, too) got up and running in record time.
Barriers were just an inconvenience to my sis, even ones her body put up. While she was accomplishing all of these things, she received two new knees, one new hip, two new shoulders. And she had a ton of hardware in her back and neck.
She left behind a successful son and daughter, two successful grandsons, and a great-granddaughter whom she adored.
And she leaves the world better place.
We should all be so lucky.
