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One Final Ring of the Bell
By Curt Kipp
"Who runs the schools? The secretaries. They know where the keys are. They know every child's name."
—Hoyt Aden, Wilsonville School reunion, 2001
And he should know. His mother, Alice Aden, was the front office secretary at the school for more than 25 years, retiring in 1986.
Mayor Charlotte Lehan, who attended the school when Alice was the secretary, remembers her gift for solving the big and little problems that children encounter.
"She was very sweet and never flustered," Lehan said. "She had a solution to problems that, from a child's point of view, seemed unsurmountable. That’s why (so many former students) all feel a connection to her."
Services were held on Monday afternoon at Cornwell Colonial Chapel for Alice, who died at home Jan. 19 at the age of 83. The Rev. Linda Mines Elliott officiated. A private burial followed.
Alice's daughter, Emily Preator, said she's been hearing many comments similar to Lehan's in the days since her mother’s death.
"She was a nurse and a seamstress," Preator said. "She'd feed them if they didn't have lunch. She made such an impression on people all these years. She was always positive to people and never had an unkind word to say to them."
Although Alice Aden was considered a Wilsonville community fixture, her roots were in the Midwest. She was born March 31, 1921 in Oklahoma City, just 14 years after Oklahoma became a state.
Her parents were Joe and Inez Novak. Her father worked at a newspaper printing press; her mother was a homemaker who earned extra income by doing laundry and other domestic work for other people in their homes.
After graduating from high school, Alice went to business school and then took a job as an attorney's secretary. In 1943, she met a young Army soldier from Wilsonville, Oregon named Emery Aden who had fought in World War II.
"He told us, 'I loved her the minute I first saw her, and I've felt that way ever since,'" Preator said. "And my mother said the same thing."
Emery and Alice were married in a civil ceremony in Oklahoma City on Jan. 31, 1946 — the same day as Emery’s parents had been married years earlier.
The young couple lived in California and Washington, but soon moved to Emery's hometown of Wilsonville. His roots in the community were, after all, deep. His parents, Henry and Blanche, owned and operated the general store, and both had served as postmaster. "My father just grew up in that background," Preator said. "He believed in service to the community and my mother married into it, and believed in it also."
They had three children — Hoyt at the end of 1946, Kent in 1948 and Emily in 1953.
As Lehan recalled, there were no preschools or kindergartens in those days, so Alice and four other young mothers — Barbara Boozier, Donna Balsiger, Midge Seeley and Lehan’s mother, Dorothy — improvised a solution. They formed a play group for their daughters which had an educational tone.
"They all had little girls," Lehan said. "We were all close to the same age."
The mothers would trade off teaching the group a few at a time, allowing the others to shop or take care of things around the house.
The children included Emily Aden Preator, Debi Balsiger Laue, the Seeley sisters, the Boozier sisters and Lehan and her younger sister Adele.
Alice became the school secretary in 1959 or 1960. At first she was an unpaid volunteer, but eventually the school had the money to pay her.
The family lived in a house on Wilsonville Road, just west of Interstate 5, where the city's monument sign now stands. The house was moved once to make room for a gas station and a cafe, but all of the structures were removed and the land is vacant today. The couple moved to a home on Butteville Road in the early 1980s.
"My mother would have, if she could have, had all of us living in one big house," Preator said. "She would have wanted it to be like South Fork on Dallas. She really preferred to be in her own home and have all of us here."
Alice's retirement party was in 1986. Following retirement, she continued to volunteer at the school, teaching art and literacy. "She would give talks on different painters," Preator said.
Alice never limited her community involvement to the school, however.
Emery was a member of the Oddfellows lodge, and Alice was in the related Rebekah Lodge, which was for women.
"They were there every Thursday night for as long as I can remember, and Tuesday for the men," Preator said.
The lodge eventually closed down due to a lack of membership, but the building still stands on Wilsonville Road, across from Walgreen's.
Until recently, Alice was involved in efforts to bring an Oddfellows/Rebekah lodge to Sherwood, Preator said.
Emery also was in the Lions, and Alice was in the Lady Lions. She attended Wilsonville United Methodist Church, and also was involved at various times in the Wilsonville Garden Club, the Boones Ferry Days festival committee, and the Wilsonville Community Center.
Alice was seldom if ever seen in anything but a pantsuit or a dress, but for the festival, her daughter said, she would make an exception and show up in jeans and cowboy boots.
"She always dressed for the occasion," Preator said.
At the Community Center, Alice helped establish the receipt program with Lamb's Thriftway.
Customers put their register receipts in a box, and Lamb's donates a percentage of the total amount to the Community Center, to be used for senior programs. Alice had to add up the receipt totals herself on an adding machine.
Alice remained an avid reader, keeping a large, hard-bound library of mysteries and other works. She enjoyed watching Portland TrailBlazer games on TV and doing the crossword puzzle in the daily newspaper.
"She did the jumbo and my Dad did the word search," Preator said.
They also enjoyed the companionship of her shih tzu, Gizmo.
Alice is survived by her husband, Emery; her sister, Mary McMahon of Oklahoma City; their three children, Hoyt of Portland and wife Susan, Kent of Wilsonville and wife Jackie, and Emily Preator of Aloha and husband Jerry; two grandchildren, Amy Aden and Melissa Sweeny; and four step-grandchildren.
The family is asking that remembrances be made to the Wilsonville Community Center.
After Wilsonville School closed in 2001, Alice was recognized at the all-class reunion with a special award for her years of helping children fix their problems.
"This is one of the most marvelous times of my life," she said at the reunion.
From the Wilsonville Spokesman Newspaper, Tuesday, February 01, 2005
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