Obituary of Emy L. Leger

Emily Leger passed away on December 7, 2018, at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey. She left behind a robust shelf of baseball books, a first-rate collection of vocal-jazz CDs and two children, Scott and Jill.

 

She was born in 1936 in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley, a place she called “Nowhere, U.S.A.” She was named “Emy Lou” after her much-loved grandmother, Emily Louise, and adopted the name “Emily” in later life.

 

An only child, she grew up loving Mexican food, going to the movies, the smell of pepper trees and orange blossoms and listening to radio shows like “Grand Central Station” and “The Shadow.” She married twice, first to Vernon Holman in 1953 and then to Ronny Leger in 1966. She had three children: Scott, Jill and Lezah Lynn, who was born in 1954 and lived only three days.

 

In the late 1950s, Emily worked as a parking-lot attendant at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, where she was a freewheeling single mom who once tinted her hair light blue to match her car and who sometimes claimed to have invented the ponytail. She later got a job in the aerospace industry and excelled as an electronics-assembly worker. When she remarried and moved north to the college town of Chico, she began working with disabled children as a teacher’s aide.

 

Emily realized a lifelong dream when she retired from teaching in 1991 and moved to New York City, where her son, Scott, had settled. After a brief stint as a nanny, she became the very stylish front-desk receptionist at Y.A.I., a facility for disabled adults located across the street from her West Village condo. She worked there for over 20 years before moving to a senior-housing complex in South Orange, New Jersey, just down the road from her son.

 

Always disciplined, Emily started jogging in her 40s and exercised virtually every day of her life after that. She never ate the second piece of bread in a sandwich and could make a blueberry donut last a week. She was never late. And when it came to her opinions, she was fond of the unvarnished truth. Emily was intellectually disciplined as well, a lifelong quester and learner who scheduled her weekends around visits to the library. Areas of avid intellectual pursuit over the years ranged from baseball to algebra to the periodic table of the elements to a Montana pioneer named Granville Stewart, who, in the 1970s, seemed like another member of the family. While she could drift down memory lane for hours, Emily was always up on the latest news, and in recent years regularly attended lectures at the South Orange Public Library.

 

She kept a pillow on her favorite chair that said “It’s a Wonderful Life!” and there are dozens of photos of her smiling a movie-star smile while leaping through the air, playing in the snow and cheering on any team that was not the New York Yankees. In 1987, she got to see Paris and other European cities and nearly three decades later went to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, courtesy of her son, Scott. She loved the theater and saw dozens of Broadway shows, as well as productions in San Francisco, Washington, DC, and Ashland, Oregon. She visited Montreal and Quebec City and took the Maple Leaf train from Penn Station to Toronto to see her daughter Jill and son-in-law, Rob. She loved to drive, especially with showtunes cranked up high. She filled her home with music too, and as a younger woman would often sing along, loudly and with joy.

 

Emily found joy in things big and small. She loved red-wine spritzers, Chanel No. 5 and gardenias. Sweet turns of phrases or tender commercials choked her up. She had a passionate, lifelong love for newspapers and couldn’t function properly without her TV Guide. She adored Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Rosemary Clooney. She was a proud Scorpio who always checked her horoscope (and would gladly read you yours). She liked The Twilight Zone, Friday Night Lights, the Lifetime movie “Living Proof” (which she watched whenever she was feeling blue) and the sports movie “We Are Marshall.” Her favorite songs were “Stardust” and “I Can’t Get Started.” She loved Dijon mustard, the occasional French fry and See’s Candy. Emily was a masterful parallel parker. She never saw the need to replace anything that was still working and still weighed herself on the same bathroom scales she’d purchased with Blue Chip stamps in 1965. She styled herself with simple elegance and had unimpeachable fashion instincts. No one ever made a better fried-egg sandwich or a better carrot cake.

 

She absolutely hated losing things (“It’s just GONE!” she’d cry) and was miserable without access to shade, especially if she didn’t think she had on enough sunscreen. She had no time for crossword puzzles or pizza from the place on the corner (“Their pizza sucks!”). In her presence, it was best not to mention Mel Tormé, Melissa McCarthy or the movie “Sideways.” She was never pleased when you put a glass directly on her tablecloth. She hated too many blankets on her bed and films with too many special effects. She had a tortured relationship with her smart phone. The current state of politics wearied and depressed her mightily.

 

Emily’s heart was fierce and generous. She was a big tipper and a sidewalk softie who seldom passed a homeless person without giving a little something. In the 1990s, she was a devoted friend and hospice volunteer to an AIDS patient named Paul. She sent Valentines, birthday greetings and anniversary cards, always with checks inside. She played a small part in Hollywood history in 1958, when motion-picture pioneer Jesse Lasky had a sudden heart attack in the lobby of the Beverly Hilton. She knelt beside him and was holding his hand when he died. It wasn’t until she saw the front-page headlines the next day that she knew who he was.

 

She is mourned by her son, Scott Holman, of Maplewood, NJ, and her daughter, Jill Legér, of Toronto, Ontario, and their respective partners, Mark Johnson and Robert Pincombe. She is also dearly missed by a wealth of friends and cousins who grieve the passing of such a singular force of nature.

 

Per her request, there was no service after her passing. In lieu of sending flowers, family and friends are humbly requested to consider donating in her name to the Southern Poverty Law Center. https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/mail-in_donation_form.pdf

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