Surrounded by loved ones and her favorite flowers, Beryl Parrington passed peacefully on July 25th, 2019.
Beryl led a life filled with travel, adventure, and intense reading. She was born in her grandmother’s house on Shore Street in Birkenhead, England, on January 17th, 1925. She had a twin brother, Kenneth, with whom she danced with as a child in a dance troupe and remained remarkably close throughout her life until his death in 2010.
Beryl met the love of her life and her future husband at a church picnic when she was only 11 years old, Edgar Taggart Parrington (d. 2007). Ed would regale his children and grandchildren of tales of their courtship, and could still recall precisely what Beryl wore the first time he saw her at the fated church picnic. As they became teenagers and adults, World War II broke out and Beryl did her bit as a British WREN (Women’s Royal Enlisted Navy), while Ed served as a bomber pilot and squadron leader in the Royal Air Force. They would often meet in London on leave and dance the night away together.
After the end of the war, Beryl and Edgar married on August 26th, 1946, at Moreton Presbyterian Church. Their first son, John Kenneth, was born the following June and soon thereafter Ed and Beryl immigrated to Canada and later to Dallas, Texas, where he was born and had family friends to help find work. After a bitter winter in Winnipeg, Beryl travelled with John and their second child Alan to join Ed in Dallas — Beryl often recalled how they hopped off the train in Dallas in fur coats, which turned more than one head. After a decade in Dallas — where they had three more children, Margaret Frances, Beryl Ann, and Francis Edgar — Beryl and Ed moved first to Grand Lake and then Winter Park, where they built and ran the Tally Ho, a delightful ski lodge now owned by their best friends Mil and Rich Holzwarth. They built a second lodge out on the Tally Ho Ranch on 360 acres of beautiful meadows and woodlands up Church Park Road. For their retirement, Ed and Beryl moved back to England to be near their daughter Ann who was stationed at RAF Lakenheath near New Market in the US Air Force. Ed and Beryl delighted in their beautiful English garden, wonderful friends, and grandchildren. In 2000, they returned once again to Colorado and settled in Colorado Springs with their son Alan where they reconnected with dear friends and readily made new ones. In 2007, Ed was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He passed away in Dayton, Ohio, where both their daughters lived just a block from one another.
Although mourning her husband and best friend deeply, Beryl thrived under the loving care of Maggie and Ann, and eight grandchildren. She delighted in long uninterrupted hours solving the New York Times’ crosswords, reading her favorite murder mysteries, and Mitford sisters’ biographies; she loved going to the hair salon, as well as enjoying manicures and pedicures. She greatly looked forward to Saturday afternoons out for tea and coffee with her daughters. She also travelled each July to Colorado to spend her time with her son John and his wife Nila, their grandchildren and great grandchildren. Wherever she went she was the center of her family’s world as matriarch in the truest sense of the word: full of wisdom, guidance, grace and love.
The family is planning a memorial service for both Beryl and Ed at Calvary Cemetery in Dayton, Ohio, on October 5th, 2019, to be followed by a tea party in their honor. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to one of Beryl’s charities: Save the Children and St. Jude’s Hospital.