Ok, ok, Sally Summers was not my aunt; she was technically my “second cousin, once removed” (she was my father’s cousin - my grandfather and Sally’s father were brothers). And she wasn’t really “mine,” she was everyone’s.

See, if you live in York, and are older than fifty, you know Sally, or at least know of Sally. She was an omnipresent force in this town, following whatever cause struck her whim or fancy and driving it to whatever resolution she felt necessary, usually behind the wheel of a convertable her petite frame could barely navigate. She was fiercely loyal to her family and friends, vicious to those who would hurt them, generous to those who respected them. I’ve long since lost count of the number of times someone in this area, when hearing my last name, would ask, “Are you related to…SALLY SUMMERS?” (Yeah, her name always seems to be in capitals when people outside the family pronounce it. Sometimes from inside the family, too.)

Another thing you need to understand is how odd it is that Sally and I would have been as close as we were. Years and years ago, there was an auto accident involving the two brothers (my grandfather, her father), and they stopped speaking…as with many goofy family feuds, the details are lost to time, but the results are that there are very few contacts between the two sides of the family…except for me, that is.

Sally found me when I was doing high-school and local theater…she asked me to join a local production of a theater piece she had written, “York’s Immortal Year,” as the young boy deciding to join the revolutionary army (back then, I was probably nineteen, and looked fifteen-sixteen tops - even into my late twenties, I was being cast as a teenager). It wasn’t a stellar production, woodenly directed, and a little sappy, but it was a paying gig and I got to kiss the girl, so I was in.

Now you have to understand I’ve always been one of those people who doesn’t know how to say, “I can’t.” If asked to do something, I always mumble about how it cannot be done, and then figure a method for doing it. Sally asked for an automatic method for changing slides for one of her parties (I’ll be touching more on these luaus in a minute), and since I wasn’t yet great with electronics, I devised a truly goofy system (which worked beautifully, thank-you-very-much) involving the works from my kitchen clock, a cardboard cover, some bolts, and pieces of solder. (This Rube Goldberg-like device was eventually replaced with a set of timer circuits based on a 555 timer and 9v battery, but to this day I’m more proud of tearing apart that apple clock with its 15-second switching and solder-lines that needed to be occasionally re-bent.)

Sally now had a “go-to guy.” And Sally wasn’t about to let that go.

These luaus Sally held started when she was managing an apartment complex in the area, and moved to outside her home once she was no longer with the company. I got involved while they were on Fifth Avenue doing sound and lights, but it was when they moved over to her nephew Dr. Craig Ellis’ home in East York that they became…serious productions. Sally wanted a closed-circuit television network, so people sitting behind the pool area could watch the stage show (yeah, the stage show) from the comfort of their tables…so I was the guy to go-to. (It was originally an awkward cobble of a B-I Betamax and a black-and-white video camera, improved upon over the years until it was a bank of three recorders showing Hawaiian scenes during quiet periods, color cameras, switchers, and d*mned near anything else I could think of to throw into the mix.) The stage shows themselves were…something to behold; Carl Weber, Glenn Wolfgang (Woflgang Candies) and I routinely did an over-long bizarre hybrid of “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Love Boat” (I spent years trying to avoid the notoriety that show brought; now, I’d give a whole lot to spend a little more rehearsal time with Carl and Glenn, both hysterical people who kept me laughing, good friends no longer with us), the Summers Sisters (Sally, Viola, Mary, and Lois) performed a musical number or four (the audience by this time had had plenty to drink, thank heavens), Tiki gods were aroused, and the volcano erupted every hour or so.

Volcano?

Uh-huh. Huge swaths of canvas, plumber’s smoke bombs, popped corn, flashing lights, and sound…lots of sound. The eruption sound was mixed using the roar of a Saturn V taking off, a freight train, various explosions (some running backwards), and a bunch of other sounds, all mixed on my home recording studio comprised of two turntables, two reel-to-reel recorders, a couple of cassette recorders, an 8-Track recorder (kids, ask your parents if you don’t know what an 8-track is), and a mixing board purchased at Lafayette Electronics (similar to the Radio Shack chain, disappeared sometime in the 1970’s, I think). How do I know all this? The go-to guy mixed it, and also spent time inside the thing throwing the popcorn into the fan.

The last luau held, I even inadvertently tried to kill off half the attendees…see, there was this fog needed for one of the stage productions, and I devised this kludged system of electronically-detonated smoke bombs in coffee cans, which worked beautifully in the rehearsals but the night of the performance the winds shifted sending the smoke out over the house, leading to gales of hacking and coughing from those in the front rows, some of whom were old enough that this could cause serious respiratory problems.

Special effects were expected at Sally’s parties. And Sally’s luaus were literally legend in the York area. (Did I mention the leis were live flower leis, flown in from Hawaii?)

So Sally’s funeral was yesterday. And in a vast departure from pretty much any funeral you’ve ever been to, there were peals of laughter during the service. No joke; we laughed and cried at the same time, as Rev. Henry Korinth detailed the things we all knew about Sally that made her so unique. And then we drove to the cemetery, and stood respectfully as the final words were spoken over what is now Sally’s final resting place. We returned to the church, and chatted politely with the family and friends.

And then Dr. Ellis took us all over to The Yorktowne, a favorite haunt of Sally’s and the home of the York Codorus Yacht Club, where we toasted Sally’s life. A box of leis appeared, along with silly little drink umbrellas, and we drank, and we laughed, and we swapped stories, and we partied. And I swear, I could sometimes hear Sally’s laugh coming from inside Off-Center (we were all sitting outside in the warm spring day).

I’m guessing that some people reading this are a little shocked about that laughing during the funeral service (probably more shocked knowing that Henry received a round of applause for his remembrances), and possibly horrified by the toasting, drinking, and carryings-on at the Yorktowne. And I wouldn’t blame you, except…you didn’t know Sally.

There were lots of wonderful things said about her today, some not strictly true (as at any passing, faults are ignored and virtues are exaggerated). But the one thing that no one can dispute is that Sally never wasted one minute of the ninety-some years she spent on this earth. We talk about people “having a full life” when they pass on, but in Sally’s case, it was absolutely true. Where some of us sip cautiously from the cup of life, she drank deeply every moment she was given. Her nephew Craig joked that he eventually grew older than she was, and that’s almost literally true - her unquenchable thirst for life kept her soul young, even while her body aged and eventually failed.

I have no idea what comes after this life, but I can guarantee you that if there is something past here, Sally was arranging a party; and Carl, Glenn, and many others who have gone on before were there wearing their leis and raising a glass to those of us still living, begging us not to waste any of the too-short time we’re given. So on this beautiful spring day, how could we possibly do any less than to honor that by wearing our leis, raising our glasses, and drinking as deeply as we could from this precious and fragile life?

What greater legacy could anyone leave? Goodbye, Sally. And thank you.