GALLUP, Ada B.

Ada B. Gallup, 83, passed away of lung cancer at home on July 3, 2002 in Phoenix. Born in East Liverpool, Ohio, on November 29, 1918, to Brace Harrison and Margaret Elsie Crawford, she moved with her husband Donald to the San Francisco Bay area in 1947. She worked many years for Schlage Lock before they retired to Phoenix in 1978. Don and Ada spent fifteen years enjoying life before health problems set in. They bowled, golfed and socialized with friends at their cabin in Pinewood. They toured Mexico, Hawaii, and Europe, and went on cruises in the Caribbean and Pacific and through the Panama Canal. Ada was so selfless that she put Mother Theresa to shame. Ada's priority was taking care of her family; she never allowed them to take care of her until the very end. Just seven days before her final collapse, she went on her weekly shopping expedition, visiting three or four grocery stores to get the best goods and lowest prices. When Don was hospitalized five times in 1999 and 2000, for gall bladder removal, three successive complications, and finally a broken back, she watched over him like a hawk, demanding action when problems arose. Her intuition probably saved his life more than once. Ada had great silent courage. She never complained. Although cancer was diagnosed in 2000, she enjoyed relatively good health until May 2002. Ada was not an effusive person, but quietly warm and loving. She said she didn't want a dog, but her heart melted when her daughter Susie gave Dad Sweetie. The puppy always greeted her first when it entered the door. To the end, Ada had a spunky sense of humor. When asked what she wanted, meaning custard or ice cream, she said "give me a flying machine. She spent more than a week at the Odyssey hospice, where she received wonderful care, before deciding to go home for the end." Ada had few faults. The most notorious was no sense of direction. She went into the ladies' room at the Alhambra, the Moorish palace in Spain, and disappeared for thirty minutes. Her increasingly nervous family could not imagine what had happened to her until they discovered that she had exited from a back door, where she was anxiously awaiting them, thinking that they had disappeared. This is perhaps the world's first and only case of someone getting lost simply by going in and out of a bathroom. Ada is survived by her husband Don, a retired electrical engineer who worked for the Pacific Gas and Electric Company back when it made money. Don always lived by logic but threw it to the winds when he offered his entire fortune to the doctors if only they could to save his beloved Ada. Against medical advice, he sought out new cures, so desperately he wanted to keep her. Susie, their daughter, a free spirit who lives atop a mountain in New Mexico in a house without plumbing or electricity with her family of dogs and a cat, was with them at the end; as was their son, Jeff, a retired diplomat who moved home to help his parents. Ada's identical twin, Irma, her best friend and pea from the same pod, also survives. The two became even closer after their families retired to Arizona on the same day in 1978. For more than twenty years, they phoned each other every night at the same time. Ada's final days were brightened by a visit from her grandson, Patrick Scott Lavelle, Susie's son, a small businessman in the Santa Cruz, California area, who enjoyed many summers spent with grandma and grandpa; Patricia, his wife, a Lockheed Martin Chemical engineer; and their four children, Rosalea, 16, Rachelle, 12, and two five year old twins, Nina and Ginger. By chance or God's will, their planned visit to Phoenix was moved up to June from the end of July, giving Ada her first and last chance to see them. The five-year olds held her hand and chatted with her during her last days. Services at A.L. Moore-Grimshaw Bethany Chapel, 710 West Bethany Home Road, Phoenix, on Tuesday, July 9, 2002. Contributions in lieu of flowers to Odyssey Hospice, 8977 West Athens, Street, Peoria, Arizona 85382, or the charity of your choice. The Arizona Republic July 7, 2002