Obituary for Blanca Aviles

Blanca Aviles

(March 23, 1923 – December 22, 2016)

Blanca Dimas Aviles passed away on Thursday, December 22, 2016 at Willow Haven Nursing Home in Tonkawa, Oklahoma. She was 93 years old.

Blanca was born on March 23, 1923 in Moca, Puerto Rico to her parents, Benancio and Brigida Aviles. She was one of 13 children and the only one to attend and graduate college. She graduated from nursing school and worked as a Registered Nurse. She was the charge nurse of an entire clinic for many years and used this experience to save Kyle’s life not once, but twice. Blanca strongly believed in education and helped many family members become nurses. Her background in nursing allowed her to assist in delivering her grandchildren. She had a passion for helping the less fortunate and did so by supplying free baby formula to new mothers.

Family was everything to Blanca. When one of her grandchildren, Stephanie, was really sick and in the hospital, she never left her side. For some reason unknown to her family, jackets were something they never left the house without. One of her grandchildren, Sasha, remembers wearing a jacket outside in the middle of July. Jackets were required regardless of the temperature and for all trips to the corner store. Like many grandmothers, Blanca always made sure her family was fed. She would feed her grandchildren mac ‘n cheese while they were hiding on the upper ledge of her bedroom closet. She would also feed her grandkids crackers with butter, milk, and coffee almost every day after school. Jugo de uva, jugo de china, crackers con mantequillas, café, “snakes”. Even when her family dropped her off at the grocery store to do her own grocery shopping, she would always ask them if they were hungry and make them food regardless of their answer.

Blanca enjoyed her great-grandchildren and would let them use all of her blankets to make tents in her house. She also let them take every article of clothing in the house, throw it in a corner and pretend to be moles burying beneath the pile.

Her kids used to hide in the bathroom so she wouldn’t catch them. Sasha covered her whole house in peanut butter thinking it was a great prank. Luckily, she didn’t kill her! She would chase Alex and Kyle around the house with her “monster face.”

She loved her Spanish soap operas and would watch them with Stephanie every day. She would always record cartoons on VHS and play them as soon as Kyle got to her house.

Sasha remembers how no matter what she did, Blanca made her feel like she should be proud. Blanca was a tremendous woman who will be deeply missed by her friends and family.

Survivors include her daughter, Gladys Gehling of Tonkawa, grandchildren, Roberto Carols Andujar and wife, Candyce of Woodbridge, Virginia, Denise Trombley and husband Dr. Robert Trombley of Pryor, Oklahoma, and Zailette Davis and husband Jim Davis of Tonkawa, Oklahoma, as well as many great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at St. Joseph’s Church in Tonkawa on Tuesday, December 27, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. A rosary will be held on Monday, December 26, 2016 at 7:00 p.m. at Trout Funeral Home in Tonkawa.

Source: Trout Funeral Home