Sunday, April 25, 2004
She was a good neighbor
When Epperly spotted her neighbors while out on her afternoon walk, she did more than just wave to them. She stopped to talk. She asked about their families. Yvonne Silvers went to Christiansburg High School with Epperly, but they didn't become friends until they both lived in the same neighborhood.
"She was called the Good Samaritan of Sherwood Forest. She was always 'doing' for neighbors. If there was a death in the family, she did anything to help them out and brought them homemade cakes and bread," Silvers said.
Neighbor Dolores Brockenbrough met Epperly in the mid-1960s. They knew each other through church before becoming neighbors. Both taught children's Sunday school at St. Paul United Methodist Church in Christiansburg - Epperly for 37 years.
"She reached out to a lot of different people. People could relate to her," said Rev. Douglas Kanney. "She was kind of a magnet for people."
Epperly taught Glenn Cochran's two children, who are now in their 30s. He said she was sweet to the children and always read to them. Epperly's son James remembers his mother preparing little paper pockets of candy for her students on Sunday mornings. He was one of her students, too.
"Family, church, friends and neighbors - she was devoted to them all," said James Epperly, who is fire chief of Christiansburg.
Nena Epperly was raised in Floyd County but her family moved to Christiansburg after her father died when she was a high school student. She married her husband, Paul, who also lived in Christiansburg, during World War II. She told James the story of riding a train down to Georgia, sitting on the edge of her suitcase with baby James in her arms, to visit her husband during his military training.
She was nurturing but wanted her children to live right, James Epperly said.
"She would say, 'There's three sides to a story - your side, the other person's side and the right side. You need to know the difference.'" If James and his younger brother, now a realtor in Ohio, were outside playing and didn't return home when they were supposed to, she summoned them with a sharp blast of her whistle.
Even when her children were in "the doghouse," James Epperly said, "Momma had a rule. We were always welcome to come home, no matter how bad we were."
She was the family's stability, he said. Once when she was doing yardwork, she sliced into her foot with a sickle. Blood spurting everywhere, she simply covered the gash and went inside the house to bandage it. Her example of calmness in crisis influenced him in his firefighting work, Epperly said.
"She was very outspoken, in a nice way," Brockenbrough said. "She said what she felt. She kept her yard nice and expected everyone else to also, and didn't like it when they didn't."
She just wanted everyone to be neighborly, Silvers said.
Nena Epperly never learned to drive, but could walk to her husband's business, Epperly Pontiac in Cambria. Her husband, and later her sons and friends drove her where she needed to go. Otherwise, she just walked to Wade's and other stores that were close to home.
After Paul Epperly died in 1988, Nena Epperly retired from teaching Sunday school but took on a new charge - caring for her dog, Sammy. Sammy was always by her side on walks, her neighbors said.
"She was always so friendly and concerned about everyone. She had such a big heart for such a small-statured person," said Cochran, a neighbor to Epperly for 40 years.
Brockenbrough said that when it snowed, her sons would try to quickly shovel Epperly's sidewalk as a courtesy, but Epperly always caught them and paid them.
"People were kind to her, and you usually get what you give," Kanney said.
