Eleonora "Nora" Poulos

Born Eleonora María Ganly Lawrie, eldest daughter of Miguel Ganly and Maggie Lawrie, descendants of Irish and Scottish immigrants, respectively, to Argentina in the XIX century. She grew up on farms and ranches in the province of Buenos Aires, where in addition to riding horses she demonstrated a skill and vocation for climbing trees. She then attended a boarding school in the city of Buenos Aires run by Belgian nuns, which provided a more rounded education.

For reasons of that era and lack of family funds, Nora was not able to attend college and instead worked at jobs in the city. In 1946 she was a ground hostess for Pan American-Grace Airways at the Morón airport, when young meteorologist John (“Jay”) Poulos (1921-2017) deplaned from a DC3, and at first glance thought that she resembled Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman. For younger readers, it should be noted that both Ingrid and Nora were very good-looking. John followed up on his interest and he and Nora were married in 1947. They moved to Santiago, Chile in 1948, where their three sons were born: Thomas Michael (1952); John Christopher (1954): and Stephen Gregory (1958). Nora was a good parent, encouraging us to study, but never doing our homework. As she did not hold back from telling us how we could improve, it was a surprise when we discovered that she would brag about us to others.

Though they were married for 60 years until Dad's death, Nora and Jay often approached life differently. Nonetheless, they both always loved, cared for and trusted their children and had very similar views on the value of education. In our house, going to college was not debatable, the only issue was which to attend. They also shared an enthusiasm for travel that would last them and inspire us until their final days.

As we grew up, we were awed by Nora's boundless energy and her capacity to do several things at a time. She made friends easily and ran the house and the family social life. A member of the American Women’s Club and a volunteer with the Red Cross, she gave back to those less fortunate, applying her knitting skills to produce a prodigious volume of baby booties and caps. She also proved to have an extraordinary singing voice and was able to memorize the lyrics and follow the melody of any song despite not being able to read music. She sang in numerous choirs, the most memorable being those led by Ilma Bräuchle and in which she sang with Betty Campbell, long-time friend who would become one of her in-laws.

In 1971, the family moved to Dallas, where Thomas attended the University of Dallas while John and Stephen attended Southern Methodist University. In Dallas, Nora continued her singing for a few years, with the Sweet Adelines, and was a long-time member of the Círculo Español.

As we left for study and then for work, Nora's restless nature called for a new adventure which would make use of her talents and give her the income that would allow her to help people and to travel to visit friends and see sights worldwide. Applied to real estate brokerage, her strong will, perseverance, concern for others, honesty and the willingness to tell buyers to concentrate on properties within their means led her to two decades of personal and economic success.

Nora left real estate just before the major bust in the late 90's, but her real motivation was to embark on a new career: grandmother, where her only regret was having so few grandchildren. She and Jay solved this problem in part by becoming honorary grandparents to the three children of distant cousin Tommy Ganly in Ireland.

Nora also satisfied her urge to travel by embarking on numerous voyages across the world. This included many trips to Chile, Argentina and Ireland, as well as visits to China, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Russia, Germany, Holland, England, Scotland, Peru (Machu Pichu) and Easter Island. She knitted year after year, producing a remarkable number of scarves, many of which are in the hands (or around the necks) of friends and family. She also endeared herself to others by sharing with them her famous lemon cake and brownies. In her later days, a dark chocolate bar was the gift of choice.

Nora not only made friends, she never forgot them. To most people, distance is like the wind: it blows out small fires and kindles the big ones. To Nora, if there was fire, it survived distance and time as well. Once she could no longer travel, she maintained regular phone and email contact with family and friends worldwide. She would call or write friends who she met once on a river cruise decades before, or she knew when the Poulos kids played with their kids in the sixties.

Her willingness to do so much for so many was a trait she expected her descendants to emulate, particularly as she preached by example. The standard proved high for most of us, and despite us feeling that we were too big to receive advice, we were at times, nonetheless, reminded in no uncertain terms that we could do better. Alan,one of her grandchildren, said something about Nora that now, having seen the light of her Creator, she would be able to accept and even find amusing: "while grandma is not always as tactful as she might be, she is usually right".

Nora is survived by her son Thomas and daughter-in-law Nadine Campbell, of Puerto Varas, Chile, son John and daughter-in-law Michelle Shine of Lewisville, TX, son Stephen and daughter-in-law Cherry Vegela, of Farmington Hills, MI, her grandchildren Amy and husband Brian, Stephanie and husband Chris, Alexander and partner Lauren, Alan, David and Susan and her great-grandchildren Maddie, Calvin, Lily and Harley.

Good-bye Mom. Thanks for being here for us.