MOTHER’S DAY TRIBUTE
When she was 22 she and Evans Crary eloped. It was on
Feb. 4 , 1928. Talley and Evans had been dating off and on
for seven years. The year before, Evans had moved across
the state to become Stuart’s assistant city attorney. On a
whim he decided to come back to Tampa for a weekend,
after making a business trip to northern Florida. His car
broke down near Dunellon, and he hitched a ride into the
city. Talley met him at a drugstore after work. She was a
legal secretary.
“Do you s’pose you could get off tomorrow?” Evans asked.
“And get your car and drive me up to Dunellon? We’ll get
married in Brooksville on the way up.”
That was how Evans proposed.
“I spent my honeymoon pulling his car back to Tampa,”
she complained.
Afterward, Evans spent their wedding night at his parents’
house down the street without telling them a thing about his
day. Talley went home to her house and told her mother. She
couldn’t keep the big news a secret from her.
“Bless her heart,” Talley recalled. “She was so wonderful.
She said, ‘Well, I would rather you not have done it that way,
but if that’s what you want, why that’s all right.’ ”
In May of 1928, the couple announced their marriage, and
Talley joined her husband in Stuart. Compared with the modern
58
metropolis of Tampa, that tiny outpost was to Talley the
outer edge of a muggy section of Siberia.
“I hated Stuart,” Talley confessed. “I had never lived in a
small town like this where everybody knew everybody else’s
business and talked about it. And Evans finally getting into
politics, I had to be somewhat like Caesar’s wife — above reproach
— and I wasn’t constituted that way. If I wanted to do
something, I did it, which, of course, would bring the house
of cards down on my head every time.”
Talley lobbied hard to get Evans to move back to the big
city, but he wouldn’t budge. Instead, she stayed to become
a prominent fixture in tiny Stuart, as her husband climbed
the political ladder. In the 1950s, Evans wanted to run for
governor, but Talley was having none of that. Eighteen years
of statewide politics had been too much for her. So, my
grandfather returned to the quiet shadows of Martin County
to end his days practicing law in relative obscurity. By then,
Talley and Evans had become great friends with the actress
Frances Langford and her husband, Ralph Evinrude. They
joined them on many weekend fishing expeditions on local
waters, and in summer they cruised on the Great Lakes on
the famous couple’s yacht: The Chanticleer.
In April of 1968, my grandmother’s brightest hopes ended.
My grandfather passed away. Talley worshipped Evans, and
when he was gone, she worshipped his memory even more.
Her mother bore her widowhood for 46 years, and Talley
endured hers for 34.
For four or five dark years my grandmother rarely consented
to be cheery, but in 1972 her sister, Sophie, moved into
Crary House. Sophie was the most relentlessly cheerful person
I have ever known. She relieved my grandmother’s loneliness.
Talley began to reacquire the sunny face she put on for
the world. Then she was her old, entertaining self almost all
of the time. Around town, Talley and her sister became such
a famous pair that their names blended into one. How could
anyone imagine Talley and Sophie apart? But Sophie left us
in December of 1994.
In her mid-nineties, my grandmother told me she had
finally realized her mortality. I was shocked. I marveled at my
grandmother’s ability to make it for over nine decades without
realizing the woeful bell might soon be tolling for her.
When grandmother was nearing death in July of 2002, I
didn’t want to let her go. She had been an important fixture
in my life for 47 years. More than anyone else, Talley gave
me an understanding of the sense and the feel of history. She
was my living link to the past. On my last visit to her, I sat
on her bed and held her hand. Her eyes were closed much
of the time, as she was struggling against the effects of some
strong sedative.
“Is there anything you haven’t told me, grandmother?”
I asked.
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RICK CRARY COLLECTION
Talley and Evans Crary Sr. at home in front of Crary House in the 1940s.
Evans and Talley counted Frances Langford (far right) and her husband Ralph
Evinrude among their closest friends.