I came into Lola's life in the late 60's. However, it seems like I have known her forever, by the ways she told of her life and the times we spent with each other. She was made of good stock and until she reached 90 years of age she never was ill except for a few broken bones which all of us experience at times. Her secrets to good health and longevity were work. It was hard to see Lola not working on some project, cleaning homes, cutting grass, making quilts, feeding animals, maintaining a garden or canning food for future use. These she did for herself and for those of us here today and neighbors, where she lived. She was remarkable to perform all these things up to her 90th birthday.

Lola was born in Fountain County, Indiana to John W. Dyson and Prudi Wilson. Western Indiana is a farming community and everyone there was a farmer or related occupation. Everyone seemed poor or suffered shortages of life's necessities. The Depression of the 1930's seem to set the stage for Lola, never having enough time to properly cook a meal or not ever having all of life's necessities created a desire to work to overcome these obstacles.

Lola married Lawrence Albert Van Note on November 3, 1923. She had three children, Marjorie, John and Lawrence Jr. Larry was born out of that marriage. They struggled through some hard years around Mellott, Indiana and then in the late 1930's they moved to Indianapolis, Indiana and lived near and on 71st Street with their family.

She went to work with Allison Transmission in Speedway, Indiana in the cafeteria. She always told me that it was a slave-camp, hard work and long hours. She lost a lot of weight those years and never stopped thanking daughter Marjorie for keeping the house clean and doing all the laundry. Son, John, finally convinced her to quit that place and stay home. Thank you, John.

Next place was SEN-COR in old Augusta, which was a small manufacturing company. She had to help work to achieve her goal of never again, being poor. The company closed and she had to move on to Udell's furniture factory on Udell Street in Indianapolis. She worked in production as a machine operator for many years until she saw an opportunity to work closer to home in New Augusta. She went to work for Radio Wire, a company on New Augusta Road. She really enjoyed that work and became a supervisor. She liked all of the people involved. She knew the business; and would work any where in the company.

Lawrence and Lola bought a twenty-eight acre farm, North West of Paragon, Indiana. That may have been an investment or retirement home. They made improvements to that farm by replacing the house and well. A county road, later called Leachman Road, split the farm property. The house and some land were on one side and the barnyard and land were on the other. They leased the house to someone else and lived in a small dwelling (shanty) corncrib, and tractor barn. They spent every weekend at the farm until both of them were eligible to retire and moved from Indianapolis to RR # Paragon. That was in 1968-1969. They remodeled the farm house in 1973 and then tragedy struck, when Lawrence passed away March 1, 1974. She stayed on the farm until 1985, when she moved to Indianapolis into the Anherst Apartments on Coffman Road. She wanted to be near her roots at John Na Wanda Van Notes residence.

In November 1988, she moved to Jacksonville, Florida to live with her granddaughter Norma Jean Adams. The idle time moved her to more quilting and she became active in the Westside Christian Church. She traveled with a senior group who did a lot of arts & crafts. Norma died October 1993, she then moved to Marge's. Her eyesight foiled by in the late 1998 and early 199. By July 1999, her health had also deteriorated and she moved into a health care facility until she passed away.

Lola always was a humorous person and through her life laughed a lot. She shared many good times with family and friends. Here are just a few:

A. Living in Mellott, Indiana she and Tess Reid would dress up at Halloween as two farmers with a basket of eggs and a live chicken under their arms. They would enter Halloween costume contests. That was a love of her life.
B. Another time at Radio Wire, she and Bonnie were tired of daughter, Marjorie and owner, Clyde putting cigarette ashes on the floor. Therefore, they started chewing tobacco and spit on the floor. They got sick from the chew so that backfired. Cheap drunk. Ha, Ha.
C. Another incident at Radio Wire, a young man there always ate peoples food when they left I tout. Therefore, Lola made fudge candy with X-lax in it and set it on the shelf. The young man helped himself and the rest is history.
D. Marjorie and I came from Florida to the farm. Bud Martin and wife Linda had to go to Terre Haute to buy new tires for the car. On I-70 west, we had a flat tire. The spare was also flat, no flash light, no jack. Lola took her scarf off and tried to flag truckers or motorists. She looked funny on the interstate waving. N one stopped until police came with assistance.