FINAL FACEBOOK THOUGHTS ON TONI NEGRON Its just after 5:30 in the morning on Monday 9 June. The last guests for Tonis Memorial just left. Last night we watched my wedding video that they had brought and that I had never seen. It was a final tribute to a wonderful lady. We started our life together with a ceremony and a party and said goodbye the same way. When we married I was stunned by the outpouring of love we received from friends and family and when we said goodbye I was humbled and stunned by the compassion and love you all gave me. I wish to say thank you for holding me up and comforting me. It held me together for the first part of what will be a process of loss and grief. Not sure how long this process will take but from here on I will work on getting through the process in private with the understanding that as needed I can call on you all. Thank you for the many communications I received. Your understanding and words were heartfelt. Thank you for the large turnout at the Memorial, it honored a truly wonderful individual. Thank you to all who turned out for the party/reception, I was overwhelmed with your willingness to make Tonis last wishes a reality. Thank you to the many who helped with the Memorial and for the overwhelming support to put together a first class reception. I am so grateful to your generosity that words fail me. I am so blessed to have you all in my life and that got me through this dark time. I love you all. I will finish this posting with my Memorial words to Toni for those who could not be there. The words give a very incomplete sense of who she was and how completely she lived her life. Again Bless you all. A tribute to my best friend and the love of my life. I want to thank everyone for attending this Memorial Service for my wife Toni, “the General. I am especially grateful to everyone who has participated in this service: Carl Cole from Coles Funeral Home. Senior Chief Bruce Bryant, Mr. Mike Keltz, Mr. Garen Cofer, Mr. Adam Depriest, one of my former students, , Vic Negron my brother, Chuck and Mary Balogh. I am deeply humbled and moved by the outpouring of kindness from conversations, phone calls, letters, cards, Facebook and email messages. All the concern and love from everyone honored Toni and gave me great comfort. I can’t read every message I received but there was one Facebook message that especially moved me. It’s from one of my sophomore students who showed me unexpected compassion in his words. Hey commander this is Kappes, I am really sorry to hear about this. it upsets me very much. I didnt really know her very well but I knew that she made you very happy. the stories you told in class let me know that she was a great woman. my family is here for you, my mom has already said that I may go to the service and I couldnt imagine how I would handle it if I was you. Im glad to hear that you are holding in there. Ive prayed for you at my church. when I told them your story they all started crying. I wish you the best but as you have always told me life is a journey and you have to fight through it and I hope you can fight through this one. My deepest condolences to you and your family. And my prayers are with you. If you need anything my mom said dont hesitate to ask. We love you. Now the grammar is awful, no periods, lots of run in sentences and no punctuation. But the meaning and sentiment are heartfelt and it touched my heart as did the numerous other communications I received. In Toni’s Last Will and Testament in her handwriting are the following words about how she wanted her passing to be handled. It says: “Cremation, inexpensive funeral and a big party celebrating my life with family and friends” Toni would not have wanted her memorial to be a cry fest so don’t any of you start crying and make me cry too. I expect all of you to help me get through my memorial to my wife. Is that a deal? I always listen to the General and before I forget I will be having a reception following this Memorial for anyone interested at the home Toni and I built together at King’s Ridge. For those who didnt know the General well I wanted to share some stories about my life with my Toni Girl. Toni was born in Japan in 1952. Her dad was an American GI. When they came back to the US, Toni’s Mom and Dad split up. Toni has an older sister with a disability who lives in Detroit. Due to bad circumstances in her home life, Toni was eventually forced to leave her home and make her way in life when she was 15 or 16 years old. In the next few decades, Toni made a life for herself. She got married, had a beautiful child and then got married 4 more times. Like many, Toni make good decisions and bad decisions. In my view aside from marrying me, the best decision she made in her life is sitting over there, her daughter Carey who I could not be more proud of. In an effort to support herself and Carey, Toni has been a waitress, a bartender, taught at a bar tending school, worked in real estate, worked in insurance for State Farm both in Illinois and here in Aiken and has been in travel both as an employee and as business owner twice. Toni was a great cook. I didnt get this rock hard body just from exercise. Toni watched all the cooking shows like Chopped, the Sandwich King, Kitchen Nightmares and the list goes on. She duplicated and tried out a lot of the recipes from those shows. Again the reason why I have a magnificent physique. Toni had a 100 year old recipe for barbecue sauce. Toni would spend all day making the sauce, then pack it into ketchup bottles and go around Aiken giving it away to a variety of folks including workers in BILO and Kroger’s deli and meat department. Needless to say we always got the best cuts of meats when we shopped. After cooking all day, Toni would pack up and refrigerate leftovers mostly for me for the week and also give quite a bit away. Her business partner, Theresa and her husband Randy were on the receiving end of a great deal of her food. “By the way Randy, as a fellow husband I can now safely say some of Toni’s best food never made it back to your house. Talk to Theresa about it”. When Toni did entertain at any of our houses, her big thing was for our guests to think her planning and preparation for the event was no big deal. I can now say without fear of reprisal that YES it was a big deal at least for me. For whatever period it took to plan and execute a Toni event, I was a driver, a maid, a furniture mover, a food tester, a dishwasher and whatever other occupation Toni needed me to be. God help any other person who came into Toni’s orbit when she was planning an event. Last summer though Toni had never met my oldest friends the Lubinski’s; when they came to visit she drafted them into a working party for a brunch she was organizing. I already miss Toni’s cooking. My 83 year old mom came to stay with me during Toni’s illness and continues to stay and help me. The other day, mom who still thinks of me as her young man, forced me to have something to eat. I asked mom for some left over pork chops that we had saved. She made me a sandwich. I started to put some Heinz 51 on the chop but when I opened the bread I noticed that mom had slapped a whole pork chop on the bread with the bone attached. So yes I miss Toni’s cooking a great deal but on the bright side I think I will probably finally to start to lose weight after starting the TONI IS NOT COOKING DIET. Toni rarely spent money on herself. Toni and I didn’t share Christmas presents however I think thru the years, Toni tricked me out of gifts somehow. Her birthday is December 18th and heaven help me if I didn’t make a big deal out of her birthday and get her some presents. I tried to get even with Toni by saying that for my birthday in July, there is a birthday season starting in June. July starts the birthday month and there are post birthday celebrations after my birthday has passed. Toni never did buy off on my birthday plans no matter how hard I tried for extra presents. Everyone who knew Toni knew she was frugal with money. She never bought anything without some kind of deal. Toni lived for the deal. She would buy items that were advertised as buy-one get-one free and then have a coupon for more money off on those items. Toni cut coupons, requested rain checks, asked for discounts and substitutions. She shopped everyday and planned all her purchases around getting a deal. She knew every manager, counter person and cashier by name in Walgreens, Kroger, BILO and Publix. I tried to stay out of her discount madness but Toni would somehow drag me in. She would say “Tony, would you mind picking up just a few things at Kroger for me?” Like an idiot I would say “Okay Toni just give me a short list and I will go and pick up the stuff” After much impatience on my part, about 45 to 60 minutes later I would get this list that filled up an entire sheet of line paper. She would hand me a check book, 20 coupons and orders to get a rain check if some things were not available. Toni would give me further orders to call her if I could not find something at the store. Then I would get in my car and off I would go. Here is where I knew Toni got me good. I would get to Kroger or Publics and the parking lot would be completely full. Moving slowly to and from the store would be hordes of senior citizens. And only then would I realize that today was Discount Shopping Day for Senior Citizens. My first call to Toni would immediately take place from the car and lets just say I know Toni would have the phone away from her ear as I “discussed” the matter. After a while, Toni would cut into my discussion/rant and say “but honi today is the last day of the sale” I would mutter under my breath, bow my head and go into the store. About 2 hours and 15 phone calls later I would show up back at the house with the groceries only to find Toni in bed taking a nap. If Direct TV or any service was running a promotion she would call to find out why we hadn’t received the promotion. We currently have promotion discounts for services from Direct TV, AT&T, and ADT Security that should have run out years ago or were for only new customers. She told Danny at Lad Britt Auto that he could sell a Ford Focus (that we now have) to us for any price so long as the number had a certain number of digits and started with the number 6. Danny was asking for a price that started with 8. Toni would ferociously do battle with corporate customer service folks from around the world. In her worldwide travels, Toni lost some battles but mostly got her way. You can ask Senior Chief Bryant but I think we have only paid for half the meals we have ordered in Aiken restaurants. Toni would make clear to the wait staff up front how she liked her food or drinks prepared and let just say many a manager has felt her displeasure for bad service or badly prepared food. On the other hand good service and food was always tipped extremely well. As a result of her frugalness and the large amount of storage in our new house, we have an over abundance of stuff. Toni was a bit of a packrat. For the last couple of weeks, my mom has tried to reorganize the house. This is a work in progress that will go on for some time. One of the biggest projects was organizing the food pantry. Long story short I don’t know what I am going to do with 7 bottles of maple syrup, 10 boxes of oatmeal, 7 ketchup bottles, 8 boxes of pancake mix and enough food to survive a zombie apocalypse. You never knew who Toni would adopt into our family. Tom a home contractor started out putting in a bathroom at our other house in 2006 and since then he has done an amazing amount of work for us. Sometimes Toni and he would have differences of opinions on the value of his labors but in the end he would always do the work and Toni always made sure that he and his son were paid, fed a meal and ended the day with smile. Quincy had a mobile car-detailing business. Somehow Toni found out Quincy wanted to expand his business by putting another work vehicle on the road. The van needed some repairs but he could not yet afford to fix it. Toni loaned him the money to fix the vehicle and ever since he has been a member of the Negron family. Quincy told me the other day that he finally proposed and set a date for marriage to his long time girl friend because Toni badgered him into doing the right thing. T oni has adopted customers from the Travel agency. One was a senior citizen named Mr Kato. After Mr Kato’s wife passed away, Toni was willing to travel to Biloxi MS with him on a gambling junket to make sure he was safe and having a good time. Another customer asked Toni to do research some old TV show and order video’s for him. This had nothing to do with travel but Toni knew he had no one else to do this and so she did it for him. Toni has spent a lot of time trying to rehabilitate my fellow military instructor at Aiken High School, Senior Chief Bryant. Toni has given him a great deal of relationship advice. Mostly the advice has been to dump his girlfriends. When Senior Chief teased or somehow displeased Toni, her advice to Bruce has been a quite graphic explanation on the birds and bees as related to himself if you don’t get my meaning see me later. Toni loved Bruce and was fierce in trying to protect him mostly from himself. Toni was a perfectionist when it came to maintaining our houses especially the one we live in now. If something was not right be it a sloppy paint job, a crack in something, a landscaping issues or any other problem, Toni was relentless in tracking down the responsible party. I think contractors that did work on the house knew when she was on the warpath and tried to steer clear if possible. The picture I have in my head of this was an old Bugs Bunny cartoon of all the animals in the jungle running from the Tasmanian Devil. Toni has told me that she would call and leave a message for Jeff Hudson the developer who built our house and say “Jeff I see your truck and I am am coming right over to see you. I have in issue to talk to you about” When Toni got to his office which was down the street from her travel agency, she told me that she would see a truck similar to Jeff’s moving out of the driveway at a high rate of speed and the only way Jeff could have avoided her was to go out a bathroom window. In reality, Toni loved Jeff and I know that Jeff felt the same way about Toni. Jeff would do anything for Toni and I know that Toni considered Jeff family and would do anything for him. Let me conclude my Memorial to Toni with these final words. Toni could be difficult and stubborn and a real pain in the neck especially to her daughter Carrey and I. But Toni was also smart, assertive, funny, talkative (especially during movies), lively, dedicated, loyal and loving especially loving. Toni loved large and she loved unconditionally. She lived a life tailor made for a novel. I struggled to keep up with her energy and passion in our everyday life together. If Toni made mistakes along the way, if Toni made bad decisions so what, Balanced against the goodness of her heart, the rightness of her compassion for others and the amazing gift of love she shared with many, Toni’s mistakes were small in comparison. Despite a brutal beginning, she persevered and she overcame. I am awed by the greatness she achieved in living her life with such zest and enthusiasm. I am humbled that she allowed me to walk by her side for a time though the time was way to short. I am saddened for our family, for our friends and for myself. The world is a bit darker for having lost this individual who shined too brightly and left us too early. However, I know Toni is looking down upon this Memorial and smiling. She is happy that so many came for a memorial and a final testament to the life she led. She is delighted that through the remarks made today, she could get one more smile from people that she cared about and that cared for her. I know she would not expect this last request from me to you but I know this request would please her to no end. Please rise and give a final and joyful ovation to a beautiful and wonderful lady who now leaves us for her place in heaven. OVATION Thank you everyone taking the time to come here today. Your concern, compassion and love will help Toni’s family and myself begin to heal and start a new journey in our own lives. SUBMITTED 9 JUNE 2014 LIEUTENANT COMMANDER TONY NEGRON US NAVY RETIRED
Posted on: Mon, 09 Jun 2014 09:58:36 +0000
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