Losing Granny Q

When Andrew Quesenbery put his only goal of the JV soccer season in Thursday, he raised his hands in the air and scanned the stands. His sister, Sara, and mother, Cindy, weren’t up there yet. So he had a feeling that the two were still standing outside the gate. Sure enough, there they were.
“He looked right up at us,” Sara says, her arms wrapped around her brother’s. The 16-year-old Waynesboro sophomore leans in close for support.
The only thing missing was Marian Quesenbery, his grandmother, who passed away hours earlier at Augusta Medical Center.  Quesenbery was a mainstay at any and all Waynesboro athletic events she could get to (which, by the way, was plenty of them) and her death leaves a huge hole in the collective hearts of the high school’s athletic programs.
Andrew played Thursday’s game on his own accord; if the one everybody knew as “Q” or “Granny Q” were still around, he says, she would have been at the match. She would have wanted Andrew to play. She would have loved to see him score, finally.
She did see him, Sara is quick to point out. Logan Quesenbery, another of Q’s four grandchildren, says the 82-year-old was there. Just “with a different view, an aerial thing going.” You didn’t have to tell Andrew that, he felt her.
That’s why, once the referee blew the double whistle that signals the end of a soccer match, he fell to his knees, put his head in his hands and began to cry.
Recounting the story Friday, he starts to cry again. His sister holds him close and he buries his face into her shoulder. The four of them, all sitting on a too-small couch, lean in really close. Logan gets up and hands out tissues. Haley, another granddaughter, takes off her glasses and wipes her eyes while Logan does the same, her lips quivering.
“I did cry,” Andrew says through tears welling in the corner of his eyes. “You could just feel her.”
He’s spent, puts his face back into his sister’s shoulder and his head bobs up and down as he sobs. Sara leans in close. His cousins, Logan on the right and Haley on the left, push in even further. They’re all holding Andrew up. They’re all supporting each other.
She was purple, she was gold
Granny Q was a mainstay at Waynesboro High School sporting events. She didn’t like climbing the bleachers, says Sara, a junior at James Madison University.
Q’s spot was in a lawn chair along the home-side bleachers, her lower body wrapped in a blanket when it was cold. And there she would sit, like Waynesboro’s Vito Corleone. Everybody stopped to say hello when they walked into the gym to take their seats. Students. Adults. Fellow senior citizens. They all stopped and stooped down to give a greeting, a handshake or a hug. A fan of all sports, it wasn’t until Logan hit the Waynesboro volleyball court that Granny Q became a fan. Her lawn chair would shimmy and shake as she moved her body back and forth in an attempt to will the Little Giants to do better.
She found a chair mate in Billy Atkins, father of former Waynesboro volleyball standout Cynthia Atkins, who would join the tough old gal from Gary, Ind., in a chair of his own out of the stands.
Granny Q in her old-school lawn chair. Atkins in his fold-up Coleman.
“She was a true fan,” Atkins says. “How many true fans do we have left?”
Granny Q would talk about the Little Giants 2005 Final Four season every time you ran into her.
“Remember those girls?” she would ask. “They should have won it all.”
She made her way down to the Little Giants’ 3-2 loss to Sherando in the semifinals at Cave Spring High School. She made the trip with Logan and Haley’s other grandparents, Don and Nancy Layne, and greeted her two granddaughters with hugs as they cried in the gym lobby after the loss.
“We were planning on coming back and going back down for the [championship match],” Layne says. “[There] weren’t many events that she didn’t make.”
Logan can only remember crying after the loss; Haley remembers the hug Q gave her afterward.
“She always said, ‘You played great,’ ” Haley says. “Even when we didn’t.”
“And we didn’t play good that game,” Logan says.
Granny Q was a fixture of WHS volleyball, basketball and soccer games, athletic director Mel Morris writes in an e-mail.
“She was a great supporter of her grandchildren,” the e-mail reads. “But I think there was more to it than that. It seemed to me she loved being around the kids.”
She would also attend baseball games and even a few cross country events back when Logan and Sara ran for the team. To say she was always smiling would be a lie, Granny Q mirrored the team’s performance. Smiling during games a team was winning (meaning she smiled a lot during that 2005 season she would always talk about) and pushing her fists deep into the arm rests of her chair when things weren’t going so well. While nobody can confirm it, every one says she didn’t miss a single boys basketball game during the 2006-07 season.
Morris’ e-mail ends the only way it could.
“She was certainly a special lady and will be missed by all of us at Waynesboro High School.”

(break hed) Thursday was rough (break hed)

If Granny Q were to go 12 rounds in the squared circle with Death, you’d bet all your money on the Waynesboro mainstay. That’s how tough she was.
“Isn’t that the truth,” says Bette Meeteer.
Meeteer, sitting in a love seat in her living room, takes a sip of her 7-Eleven coffee (“Black,” she says, “and sweet.”) and sighs.
Thursday was not a good day.
“I got blood drawn at 7:30 [a.m.] for cholesterol, a dentist appointment at 11:15 then Gary [Quesenbery] called,” she says.
Granny Q’s son was letting Meeteer, 79, know her pal of 50-plus years was on the brink. Later in the day, as she finally made it home after a meeting at her church, she opened the front door to a ringing phone inside.
“I just knew what it was,” Meeteer says, her eyes straying toward the hardwood floors in her living room. She doesn’t look up for a good while, and takes a long break from sipping her coffee. She’s silent, the only sounds are the Chris Botti CD playing in her small stereo and the occasional car driving past her Tree Street home.
“I just dearly loved her,” she says.
They met back in 1953 after Granny Q married a childhood friend of Meeteer’s, Ceylon Quesenbery Jr., the son of Judge Ceylon Quesenbery, who served as Waynesboro’s mayor (1926-28) city attorney (1928-33) and a member of the Virginia House of Delegates (1933-48).
“She’s always been a sports fan,” Meeteer says. “She fell in love with volleyball here a few years ago. She said she didn’t know anything about it.”
But she loved it, Meeteer repeats.
“She loved it.”
Former Waynesboro coach Candace Kimmett, who co-coached the 2005 team with Pat Austin, was still in shock late Thursday, having heard the news of Granny Q’s death after her struggle with lymphoma.
“I don’t know if it sunk in yet,” she says. “I’m just trying to digest everything.”
Kimmett remembers looking toward the fan base she dubbed “The Waynesboro Wild Ones” and seeing Q wrapped up in a blanket in that lawn chair (next to Atkins, of course).
“There was always that expectation that you’d look up and see her in the chair, cheering and smiling,” she says. “She was a fan, a friend and a family member.”
That’s how things worked with Waynesboro volleyball, the girls playing their hardest and Kimmett stressing that the program was a family-based one. The fans were an extension of the family.
“It hurt,” Meeteer says, slowly putting her coffee back down and her eyes, once again, fixated on the hardwood.
Thursday, May 8, was the day Granny Q died. Eight years earlier, on the same day, Meeteer lost her husband, Billy.
“I don’t know how you deal. I don’t think I’m dealing too well with it,” Meeteer says. “I’m a Christian and I know she’s better off now, I really believe that.
“She’s with the Lord. But we’re going to miss her. She’s not with us anymore.”
Chris Botti’s trumpet is soothing in the background. Meeteer looks back down at her floor.

(break hed) She was Waynesboro’s (break hed)

Those darned trick boxes.
“Andrew, go get one of the boxes,” Sara says.
Andrew darts off the couch and heads up the stairs of his family’s home.
“She would put our Christmas gifts in these trick boxes,” Logan says.
Sara and Haley start laughing, their eyes still red. Andrew sits back on the couch and hands over a small wooden box.
“Try to open it,” Haley says.
Turning the box around, over and diagonal produces no clue as to how this thing opens. There’s no hinges, no handles, no sign of entry. All four of them laugh.
“She would sit there and laugh while we tried to open them,” Logan says.
Haley takes the box back and, with one flick of the wrist, pops the side open and hands it back. It’s still hard to do even after the demonstration.
“It was like, as I got older, we talked more about personal stuff,” Sara says.
Logan, who attends JMU with her cousin, nods in agreement.
She was always a grandmother, but added best friend to her repertoire as the grandkids got older.
The grandchildren aren’t jealous that they had to share their grandmother with a whole community. Their friends and teammates were Q’s friends and teammates.
That’s just how it worked out. They don’t mind one bit.
“Our family has a big support group now,” Sara says.
After the tears, the rest of the time is spent recalling Granny Q stories. The time she sent the kids to the new CVS around Easter to get her some white chocolate. They’re laughing, but it still hasn’t sunk in.
“It’s like she’s still here,” Logan says. The other three nod and begin chit-chatting about Q. Andrew smiles, his arm still wrapped tightly in his sister’s.
“It’s like she’s only off on a trip,” Logan says.
Atkins, her fold-up chairmate at volleyball games, has a tough time believing as well.
“It’s like someone was playing,” he says. “And she just had to go.”