| Notes |
- "known by everyone as "Nell."
Crandall Melia(her nephew) says-- " Aunt Nell was one of the most delight
ful people I ever knew. As I indicated in the notes on Uncle Oscar, I spent several summers in Kalispell when I was growing up and Aunt Nell had some of the best positive attitude and lived a life that was able to find humor in the most unpleasant moments. It seemed that she knew everyone in Kalispell in those days, as she was in the pharmacy every day greeting everyone with a big smile and a funny story.
After Uncle Oscar had terrible emphysema ( he was a heavy smoker) and as his health deteriorated, they sold the store in 1951. Oscar died in July, 1961, at the age of 57, and after living several years a widow, Aunt Nell remarried. She married a man that she and Oscar had met while trying to treat his failing health at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Art Frasier was there with his wife who was dying of cancer. After being single several years, Art called her from Vancouver, Canada and they again met when both returned to the Mayo Clinic for check ups. They got together and decide that they really enjoyed each other's company, and later married and remained so for nearly 20 years, living out their years in beautiful Vancouver. Aunt Nell often said that she was really blessed as " most women never have the opportunity of having one loving, faithful husband, and she had TWO!"
We (Charlotte, Crandall and family) had the opportunity to get to know them both very well as they spent many winters in Southern California, to get away from the months of rain during January, February and March in Vancouver. They always spent several days with us and the rest of them at the beach somewhere where we would visit them on the weekends. Art was a wonderful man, both to Nell and to us and had almost as good of a sense of humor as Aunt Nell, although it was much dryer. We would sit for hours while Nell entertained us with her humor and insight into the Melia family, which she knew from afar and from outside observation. Art was a very big man, and because of circulation difficulties, he would walk at 3 to 4 miles a day. Wherever he stayed, he would start down the street and talk to everyone he came up to, whether it was the gardener or the homeowner, and then usually find a pub or at least a coffee shop along his walk and after a few days knew all of the gossip and history of the community. Nell was an avid reader and upon arriving in a town, inquired first of the location of the library where she spent literally hours each week. They took wonderful care of each other until each of them died in Vancouver in their nineties."
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