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closeFamily, friends gather to remember Eunice
Chris Albert
“Leave this place a little better than it was when you found it,” is a message written across a quilt in the Puyallup Library.
On Saturday, March 29, friends and family of Eunice Gilliam gathered at the Veteran’s Memorial in Pioneer Park to remember a women who lived a life with that mantra in mind.
The message on the quilt was something Puyallup Councilmember Kathy Turner remembered reading as she tried to escape the rain before speaking at the gathering.
It really summed up who she was, Turner said.
“If she saw a need she filled,” said Gilliam’s daughter Chris Nimick.
Last December, Gilliam died, but the work she did to get a Veteran’s Memorial in the park will always be a tribute to the community’s military.
It only seemed appropriate to gather and remember her at the memorial. Picking March as the time to gather had to do with the significance the month played in Gilliam’s life.
Sixty years ago, on March 17, her husband Stan proposed to her.
March 17, marked the 60th Anniversary of Gilliam being proposed to by Stan, who is also deceased.
“We decided to do it in March, because of all the good things that happened to her in March,” said Puyallup Councilmember Kathy Turner, who spoke at the gathering.
As a lifelong Puyallup resident, Gilliam always had Puyallup’s interests in her heart, Turner said. Although the gathering was really for Gilliam’s family, it is a reminder of what a person’s passions for community can accomplish.
“Eunice had a way of being able to stir the pot,” Turner said. “She left Puyallup better than it was when she came here.”
She wasn’t looking for self recognition when she appeared before the Puyallup City Council adamant that it was about time Puyallup had a Veteran’s Memorial. Gilliam wanted Puyallup residents who have served in the Armed Forces, those who were killed in combat action and those who are still listed as missing to be remembered for their service.
“This was very close to her heat,” Nimick said. “She said ‘it’s time we have a Veteran’s Memorial in this town.’”
Her crusade began with the memory of a classmate — Vernon Johnson. Like many young men, he went away to serve in World War II after graduating from Puyallup High School. Johnson never came home and is still listed as missing in action.
“That stayed with her all her life,” Nimick said.
In those days, almost all the students knew each other. They had grown up in the same one room school house before going to high school.
And in those days, few comprehended that their classmates going to war might not come home.
Remembering them was the mission behind the Veteran’s Memorial, a tribute to the lives war has touched and a memorial for those classmates that never came home.