Vera Values

(Originally published August 25, 2005 in wysiwyg. Reprinted with permission from the guy in the mugshot.)


I never met Vera Mae Eversole. And I'm poorer for it, because her life is an inspiration to me.

Vera Mae lived most of her life in Alva, a somewhat remote city in northern Oklahoma that we sometimes jokingly refer to as Alvatraz. She taught high school math in a school across the Kansas border and lived a quiet, modest and uneventful life.

Those who knew Vera Mae say she never owned a car newer than 10 years old, and didn't drive far in the ones she did own. She rarely bought new clothes for herself, spent a big chunk of her adult life caring for her aging mother and sick brother until they died, and had a soft spot in her heart for stray dogs and cats, often to the irritation of her neighbors. Her "extravagance" in life was regular trips to the hairdresser.

Vera Mae was an avid gardener and a longtime member of the First United Methodist Church in Alva, where she sang in the choir. She was engaged once, but never married. By all accounts, Vera Mae Eversole loved and was loved.

Because of the outward appearance of her life, when Vera Mae Eversole died in 2003 at the age of 85, it would be easy to assume that she would live on only in the memories of those who knew and loved her — not through the things she couldn't take with her. So the Oklahoma City-based Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation — who had never heard of Vera Mae Eversole — and the Oklahoma United Methodist Foundation were surprised to discover they had been remembered as joint beneficiaries of her estate.

An estate valued at about $3 million, including property, mineral rights and other assets.

I'm inspired by Vera Mae not for what she could teach me about saving, investing or living the frugal life, though I'm sure she could teach me a thing or twenty there. I'm inspired by her life, which was undeniably rich even without the bells and whistles she chose not to collect along the way.

I'm a gadget man. If it lights up, makes noise or has an insatiable appetite for batteries, I'm all over it. Yet none of them bring me true happiness or lead me closer to where I ultimately want to be.

...

"Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.'"

"Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."