Contributions to the tribute of Laura Cashion

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David Scinto posted a condolence

Monday, April 20, 2015

I will always remember playing by the river at her house in Penfield. They are some of my best summer memories.

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Saturday, April 18, 2015

just wanted to share this, for those who weren't able to be there this morning: 100 years is a long time and yet it doesn’t seem like enough time Lolo, Laura, was the definition of femininity and strength. I called her Lolo because one of my siblings couldn’t say Laura and renamed her Lolo, I believes this was Gigi. She’s been Lolo ever since. To me she will always be Lolo, she will always be strong, she will always be an inspiration. She was a sister to Rose who was a mother to Elvie who is a mother to me. This is how she and I are related. Such a strong group of women, and let’s not forget Aunt May, another of Laura’s sisters. As a child and young woman the only women I knew were strong, capable, and independant. What a lucky girl I was. The thing I have a hard time wrapping my head around is that Laura was also once a young girl. Maybe some of you can relate to this feeling? So I asked for childhood stories about Lolo and the one I got was of her tattling on her brothers. This seems very fitting to me as she was not afraid to speak out and say what she thought was right or wrong, even if that was just a matter of opinion. Of course Laura was just over 100 years old so the details of a story from when she was a young girl are vague and I wouldn’t want to get her brothers into trouble once again by retelling it. For me, and for my siblings, Lolo took on a role of grandparent. The kind of person who only sees the good in a child, even a child who has picked all the buds off your favorite plant and has presented them to you as a gift. This is the only time that year that your plant will bloom, you would be pissed if it had been anyone else. Someone who made brownies and biscuits and pancakes on the floor so you could take part in the preparation. Pancakes for dinner not for breakfast of course. I had a chance to speak to a couple of her students and a couple of her fellow teachers from the time she taught at East Rochester and the theme was respect and discipline. You didn’t mess around in Ms Cashion’s class. Elvie, Joanne, Carol, Sue, and Eileen all echo this theme as they hear those memories at the calling hours. An echo I imagine that was full of memories of their childhood and the role of an aunt and secondary parent that Laura filled. Then cousin Carol told me a story of Laura making brownies for her students in the lab on the bunsen burner; it wasn’t just us, she spoiled all kids in one way or another. Her students also spoke of her support and devotion. If she was in your corner she stayed there. Continuously I would hear strength and femininity. Laura was a lady and everything was in order. In order to the point that when it was time to do chemistry experiments in class all the kids had to line their desks with newspaper so as to not ruin their desktops with the chemicals. She was a feminist although I’m not sure she’d have called herself one. Graduating from the U of R in 1939 with a bachelors degree in science and then Albany in 1940 with a masters in education. This was not a common thing for a woman in those days. Not to mention being one of the first (maybe the first) in her family to get a college degree. While she didn’t listen to society’s norms for a woman as she pursued a career in chemistry and education she continued to disregard many of the suggested ideas of a woman’s role except in femininity. Carol fondly recalls Lolo and Aunt May getting their hair done almost every Friday. I remember her in a skirt suit with her hair perfectly white in the most delicate ponytail with high heels and lipstick. I also remember her in pants hiking with me down to the creek with her dogs, searching for that first jack-in-the-pulpit of the season. Seeking other hard to find flowers and birds while the most perfectly behaved dogs were at our heels or running up ahead to scout the trail. A trail we had all been on so many times it hardly needed scouting. Laura was never married, when asked why she said, “I never met a man I couldn’t live without”. Even though she didn’t say this to me directly it will always be my favorite Lolo quote. Laura Cashion touched so many lives as a child, a sibling, a teacher, an aunt, a great aunt, a great great aunt, and a friend. I believe she was an inspiration to many women in a day when women struggled to find their voice and independence. I know she is an inspiration to a woman who grew up never even knowing that simply as a woman and because I am a woman I may face more challenges. Although I know she must have, I sometimes wonder if she even knew this herself.

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Demaris Hodges Verzulli posted a condolence

Sunday, March 29, 2015

I never forgot Miss Cashion, such a good teacher and class advisor. She really cared about the students and the information she was working on getting through our addled teenage brains.

Laura Cashion

1914 - 2015

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