Francella Jean Laudadio

Francella Jean Laudadio, age 90, passed away peacefully holding her son’s hand on September 21, 2024. She was the second born child to Frank and Evabelle (Ashcraft) Blade on August 6, 1934, in Spokane, Washington.  Fran always believed that her very existence was in fact due to the incessant demands of her older sister Evie, who after having begged for a sibling for years quickly changed her mind on the matter after Fran’s birth.

Fran grew up in a modest, brick house located across the street from the tennis courts of Audubon Park in Spokane. She graduated from North Central High School and pursued higher education at WSU in Pullman, WA. She spoke fondly of her time spent with her sorority sisters of the Tri Delta fraternity, going to classes by day and dances by night. Fran forfeited her college education her Junior year to instead become a wife and later a mother.

After the dissolution of this marriage and under the encouragement of her parents, she returned to college as a single, newly divorced mom. She graduated from Whitworth college, majoring in Art and earning her teaching certificate. A few years later, she moved to Tacoma, WA to start a new life for herself and her two young daughters as a high school art teacher. Fran was set up on a date with a recently disembarked Navy man, Leonard Laudadio, and they married after a short two-month courtship.

The newlyweds purchased a starter home on North 19th Street, using lawn furniture until being financially equipped to properly furnish their new house. They built a life together. Leonard adopted Fran’s daughters, and they welcomed their first baby boy in 1965, another boy just 16 short months later, and then after 11 years, a final girl. Fran loved being a mother, and she poured her heart into raising her children, making hand sewn costumes for Halloween and homemade treats for fundraisers. She never hesitated to host birthday parties with elaborate cakes and decorations, not once fretting over the state of their house, much to Leonard’s dismay, stating that a home should be lived in and not looked at.

And that house was lived in, for greater than 50 years! Every inch of their home was covered with drawings and paintings, ceramic and wood shop school projects, and class pictures of their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. Their entire home was a testament to what was closest to their heart – family.

Over the years, Fran worked as an art teacher, a clerk at JC Penney’s, and a secretary at the University of Puget Sound. She became a stay-at-home mom after the birth or her youngest child, but she continued to be active as a preschool and Sunday school teacher at First Presbyterian Church, a Bible study and women’s circle group leader, a children’s catechist and a long-time choir member at St. Rita’s, as well as a student favorite as a substitute elementary and middle school teacher at Heritage Christian School.

As a preschool teacher, she incorporated her passion for art into the classroom. Each child was equipped with an easel, a paint brush almost as long as they were tall, and three small containers of each primary color. Patiently, she would demonstrate how to mix the colors directly onto the paper, creating new hues. Inevitably, a child would become frustrated that their concoction had not produced the desired result and want to start again. But Mrs. Laudadio would gently refuse, stating that in art there are no mistakes, and with long brush strokes and gentle tweaks, this small mishap could become a masterpiece.

This was her entire approach to life, turning the mundane and ordinary into vibrance and extraordinary. Saturday mornings she would fill the house by playing Rustles of Spring on the untuned upright family piano, a composition she had mastered for a recital in her youth. Sundays, she would glide gracefully down the staircase in her church clothes smiling as Leonard sang, “Here she comes, Miss America!” She loved to sunbathe and believed that the accusation that the sun could cause skin cancer was a pure myth. She was an avid shopper, especially with her best friend Susan Rosenbladt, the two of them going to the mall under the guise of walking for exercise. Fran thoroughly enjoyed ball games, cheering loudly for her team as Leonard playfully scoffed at her. She lived for all things chocolate, treated animals as small children and babies as angels on earth, and never missed a chance to sing, even when recalling a 1930’s radio ad for Cream of Wheat with special emphasis on the line, “And it makes us shout, Hurray!”

Fran made the most difficult decision a young woman can make, and when she was in between marriages, she gave a baby up for adoption. She buried this painful secret, writing in her journal, “God let me follow my foolish ways and had to let me feel the full consequences.” Fran even believed that the surprise pregnancy of her final child was in fact a second chance, writing, “God gave me an unknown desire of my heart. Perhaps this strong desire was to again hold a baby girl like the one I had held but given up before.”

In 1985, Fran was finally reunited with her lost daughter. Every person’s story has a turning point, a before and after, and this was hers. No longer having to guard her deepest secret, Fran wrote, “There were many highs and lows as I step by step came out of the hiding place I’d been in all those years.” And with that, their family of five children grew to a family of six.

Later, Fran developed dementia, but she didn’t necessarily always suffer from it. In its infancy, she described its onset, saying it would come upon her suddenly. She’d close her eyes for less than a second, and when she opened them, she wouldn’t recognize where she was or how she had gotten there, or even what year it was. She said that she would force herself to fixate on one small thing, be it a knickknack or trinket, and slowly her memory would come back to her, like an elaborate and elusive puzzle being pieced back together.  She went through the common stages of paranoia and frustration, but by the last year of her life after having lost her husband of 58 years, she had finally come to acceptance.  The dementia was no longer a burden or an embarrassment. Instead, she was able to live entirely in each moment, without guilt and resentment about the past or anxiety and expectations for the future. No longer scared to blink, each second on earth became a precious gift, and she was at peace.

Once, when asked what she imagined heaven would be like, she replied that it is a place without pain, where the music contains notes inaudible by human ears and the colors are more vivid than our mortal eyes can comprehend. After Fran had been in hospice and unconscious for almost a week, she awoke for a few days of precious lucidity. Upon slowly opening her eyes and seeing her children gathered around her, she exclaimed, “Look at you! You are here and you are all so beautiful.” It is unclear if she knew at that moment what side of heaven she was on, but it was evident that being surrounded by the love of her children was in fact divine enough.

May we all learn to live like Fran and be a bit more forgetful, forgetting our everyday grievances, erasing our past guilt and shame, and forgiving one another as well as ourselves. Eat the chocolate, sing the lyrics, play the instrument! Live fully in each precious moment with a grateful and joyful spirit. Boldly mix new colors directly onto life’s canvas, without fear of it not turning out as planned, because it is these so-called mistakes, no matter how seemingly great or slight, that make our unique human experience on Earth truly a Masterpiece.

Fran was preceded in death by her parents Evabelle and Frank J Blade, her sister Evie Devine, and her loving husband of 58 years, Leonard Laudadio. She is survived by her six children, 24 grandchildren, and 22 great-grandchildren. They are as follows: children Jean (Bill) Jackson, Deb Laudadio (Diane Smith), Valerie Oren Stewart, James (Barbara) Laudadio, Joseph Laudadio, and Leonora Laudadio; grandchildren Aaron (Rachel) Jackson, Adam (Savannah) Jackson, Asa (Rebecca) Jackson, Asher (Amber) Jackson, Abel (Larissa) Jackson, Amos (Kasey) Jackson, Abram (Kaicee) Jackson, Annika (Abel) Smith, Addon Jackson, Cristina Stewart (Jackson Kropp), Roy Blade, Linnea Stewart, Diana Stewart, Daniel Hendricks, Caitlin Hendricks, Alyssa Hendricks, Antonella Laudadio, Annaliese Laudadio, Jessica (Adam) Webber, Jeanelle Laudadio, Jacob Laudadio, Catlynn Laudadio, Filomena Figueroa, and Violetta Figueroa; great-grandchildren Bella Jackson, Conrad Jackson, Arthur Jackson, Max Jackson, Malcolm Jackson, Milo Jackson, Oletta Jackson, Wallace Jackson, Enoch Jackson, Mitra Jackson, Ezra Jackson, Elias Jackson, Declan Jackson, Owen Jackson, Mila Jackson, Thaddeus Jackson, Rowynn Jackson, Juniper Smith, Eadon Baca, Hope Sipes, Noah Baca, and Faith Baca.

Funeral service with mass in honor of the life of Francella J Laudadio is October 19th at 11 am at St. Rita’s Catholic Parish in Tacoma, Washington.