Avril Elizabeth Laughlin Chase

Avril Elizabeth Laughlin Chase was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on Sunday, April 22nd, 1945. For 75 years she embodied the limerick “But the child born on the Sabbath day is bonny, blythe, good and gay,” meaning “having or showing a joyous mood.” Hence a lifelong friend dubbed her “Smiley,” because she greeted everyone she knew with a smile that poet Ella Wilcox described as “the smile that is worth the praise of the earth, is the smile that shines through tears,” appropriate for a woman born on what would become Earth Day. Avril was the 3rd child of The Rev. Robert J. Laughlin, a Presbyterian minister and Mabel Blue, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, who preceded her in death. Her life was changed forever when she was moved to Frankfort, Kentucky when she was 7 where her father & mother served the 1st Presbyterian Church. She skipped a grade because of her superior public education in N. Ireland and was a year younger than her classmates through her years in Frankfort’s public schools, her three years at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, VA, her one year at Stanford Univ. where she earned a B. S. in Psychology and her two years at Ball State Univ. where she earned her R.N.,B.S.N. She was a lifelong learner and reader who taught her four children, Heather, Parker, Spencer and Ashley how to read before they entered school. Her primary career was mother and, subsequently, grandmother whose grandchildren endearingly call her “Avi,” and will for the rest of their days. For 57 years she was a loving, generous wife to her husband, Hal S. Chase, and full partner in a relationship that began one warm night on April 27, 1961 almost 60 years ago. She adapted to many moves during those six decades, so many that her oldest daughter once published a short story titled, “Motion Sickness.” Avril even braved the dangers of living in the west African Republic of Cameroon where she served as a nurse and sheltered her children during an unsuccessful coup attempt in its capitol, Yaounde. She also served patients for almost a decade at Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie, IN and for two decades at Mercy Hospital in Des Moines. Moreover, she supported her husband’s passion for African-American History and gave countless hours to the Outside In project that chronicled that history in Iowa. Avril was also deeply involved in the successful management of her family’s majority interest in Farmers & Merchants State Bank of Winterset, St. Charles & Orient, Iowa. She will be missed and grieved for by her four children, her seven grandchildren and her husband, her two living brothers, Ian Laughlin of Ft. Myers, FL and David Laughlin of Sterling, VA as well as some 50 cousins in N. Ireland and a host of good, long-time friends all over the United States. Her cremains will be interred in a Chase family lot in Woodland Cemetery in Des Moines, Iowa in a private ceremony before Christmas, but her genes and joyous mood will be shared far and wide by her beloved grandchildren: Colin & Kelsey (Parker & Celia Chase of Concord, NH), Aidan & Mia (Spencer & Helen Chase of Denver, CO) and by Jackson, Carter and Chase Kilburg (Ashley & Jeff Kilburg-Park Ridge, IL). May God bless her & keep her and all those who she loved.