For the last ten years I have shared a driveway with Carole Fenton. I still remember the first day I met her – I was new to a neighborhood that many people had said was going down the tubes. “Don’t buy so close to Richmond,” they told me. It was the person who lived in the house in front of me, Carole, who showed me the ins and outs of the block. She told me who the responsible neighbors were and who to look out for. Our dogs became friends, and over the course of time so did we.
This morning I woke up to a phone call that no one would ever want to receive. Carole had drowned while rafting on Cattaraugus Creek. As I stood there holding the phone, the image of her garden materialized in my head. Over the last few years, Carole had spent countless hours in preparation for the Garden Walk; a dream that she had finally realized last weekend. Unfortunately, Carole slept through the Garden Walk because she was so exhausted from all of the work that went into it… talk about dedication. I have a feeling though, that when she heard the gushes from below her window, she felt proud beyond belief.
Not having a green thumb myself, Carole was an inspiration for the ways that she cultivated her garden and surroundings. Instead of ordering stock railings for her porch, she spent the time and money hiring a local artist by the name of Mollie Atkinson. Instead of pouring the same old asphalt driveway, she hired local landscape architects to design an oasis around her house. From what I could tell, she only had two things in life that meant more to her than her garden – her beagles and the water.
In amongst her garden, if you look really close, you can see old anchors, bottles, ropes… relics from the depths of Lake Erie that she had brought back home. She surrounded herself with the things that she loved, and she shared her life with so many. After completely fixing up her own house, she bought the house across the street and proceeded to fix that. The first thing that she did was to replace all of the porches that had been removed years ago – STEEL would be so proud. Then she painted the house and rented it out to young, respectable people who have since added to the vibrancy of the neighborhood.
To think that a woman, who has done so much for my little block, is no longer with us… it’s unbearable. Every time I walk out my door and down the driveway I will think of Carole. And maybe that’s the legacy that she would have wanted to leave behind. I have learned more from her than any book I ever read in school. I will continue to pass along life’s lessons that I learned just by talking to her and watching her as she lived her life. I’ll remember her funny t-shirts, her barking dogs, her sprinklers that soaked me as I tried to get into my house, and the lives she touched at the hospital where she worked.
In recent years Carole wrote two stories for Buffalo Rising. The first one was a heartfelt dedication to an artist friend of hers who had passed away – Jamie Lembeck. The second was a recent article on Fierce Fitness. She loved her neighborhood and the people and animals in it. As for me, I’ll be paying close attention to her garden and I’ll watch for signs of her because that’s where her spirit will always be. Carole, thank you for being a friend over the years – I will think of you often.