HILDE YVONNE FRANKLIN
1928-2018
We lost Hilde Yvonne Franklin on October 22, 2018, after over 90 years of life and living. “Yvonne” was born in Saarbrücken, Germany, on May 27, 1928, just as Germany and the world was preparing for the horrors of World War II. She was 11 years old when the war began and for the next many years she learned to survive each day. That included spending weeks underground to avoid Allied bombs and literally crawling through mine fields in search of food for her family. Yvonne was a survivor.
At the end of the war in 1945, seventeen-year-old Yvonne Eckel was working as a telephone operator for the Allied administrators of her country when she met a handsome U.S. soldier. Within the year, she had married and moved to America, where she committed herself to “losing her accent” so she could blend in with her new country.
Although her marriage failed, it produced her one and only child, Ronald Glenn Franklin, who was born in Newcastle, Indiana, on July 13, 1951. Soon thereafter, she met the love of her life and husband for over 45 years, Edward Campbell Franklin. After reading a Reader’s Digest article touting Houston as the “Sunbelt of the South,” the newly constituted family made their way by train to Houston in 1953.
Yvonne was the consummate “homemaker,” which in the 1950’s meant a woman totally devoted to her new husband and young son. She always put them first, far and above any desires of her own. She was a wonderful mother who constantly told her son that with hard work and good grades there were no limits to his success. After young Ronnie presented to her a 3rd grade report card revealing straight A’s in all subjects— except a D in conduct—she literally covered the D with her finger and told him, “these other ones are the ones that matter.” For better or worse, he always remembered that instruction.
While living in a household of modest means, Yvonne benefitted from the lessons of prudence and frugality she had learned during the war. She made two house payments each month, made extra money as an “Avon Lady,” and later worked at a resale shop (where she single-handedly foiled an armed robbery.) Her proudest financial achievement was buying not an insignificant number of newly issued Apple Inc. shares in 1980 (because she “liked the name,”) and then unfailingly ignoring her son’s regular advice to sell some of them.
More recently, “Granny” lived for special moments with her son, daughter-inlaw, Janet, granddaughters, Laura and Catherine, and the puppies, BB and Charlie.
Yvonne was a remarkable woman. Because of her boundless energy and love, she leaves a son whom she nurtured and encouraged through law school and far beyond, and two granddaughters who have been blessed with lives that an eleven-yearold German girl could never imagine. We will all miss her. Private services to be scheduled in her remembrance.