1994 – 2018
1962 to present, Washington, DC mainly
Over all the years I knew her, Celestine remained disarmingly beautiful and joyful. She irradiated the same exuberance for life and genuine interest in others that characterized her mother, my Aunt Netty. Both, possessed this crazy, offbeat joy that was so intoxicating it could draw you in and send you off in directions you never thought possible!
The first time I remember seeing Celestine Favrot was at her wedding in 1962. In my inexperienced mind, she was simply a beautiful, joyful princess on the arm of my Uncle Larry walking her down the aisle to the dashing and adventurous Tom Arndt. It was the first time I felt her magic, saw sunshine in her smile, and heard the pure exhilaration of her laughter!
Now, we all knew that this beguiling and beautiful newlywed was moving to far away Asia. To my seven-year-old self whose TV viewing included old black-and-white war movies, I found it confusing. Weekly, I watched frightening death and destruction at Pearl Harbor, Saipan, Bataan, Heartbreak Ridge, or Pork Chop Hill. It was clear to me I was afraid of “over there,” so why, I wondered, was my cousin moving somewhere so far away and so frightening?
My second vivid memory of Celestine was when she was just back from India (was it Marcia’s wedding?). She was wearing a brightly-colored sari and she had three young sons in tow. She was now a beautiful, exotic vision of joy. Just watching her sent a delighted shiver down my spine at the dizzying fusion of cultures on display. I was entranced by her aesthetic but also incredibly moved by her down-to-earth demeanor as she seamlessly interchanged her roles as mother, daughter, wife, and concerned and informed global citizen.
Fast forward the years to my attending Mount Holyoke College in 1973, a college selection influenced by both Jeanette’s and Cely’s Seven Sister forays to Wellesley. There, I fell in love with Chinese history. It was destiny. Cely and Tom introduced me to what would become my passion. Their influence on my life was profound. They helped me to see the world differently. Tom’s and Cely’s unapologetic globalist views and compassionate zest for Asia, and their work there, and their decision to raise children there, expanded my universe not to see geographical boundaries as barriers and to appreciate the art, food, and people of the world in a new way.
Six years later, while attending the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, I landed an internship with the Agency for International Development in Washington, D.C. Tom worked there and Cely and Tom graciously invited me to stay with them in the summer of 1979. Each work day, I commuted to USAID Headquarters with Tom and their neighbor, “Dan the Man,” as the boys loved to call him. I had the unique privilege of sharing lively, humor-filled conversations at family meals where everyone’s voice was both listened to and poked at and prodded. I saw Cely as the Mom she was to four active sons. Anything was possible with them and she took it with calm recognition, laughter, and true joie de vivre.
I remember one evening, in particular, when dinner was ready and we were calling the boys in to come and eat. It turned out that all four of them were perched on the roof of a two-story house that was being built across the street. I remember being quite fearful for their safety. Cely, however, saw it as yet another example of their pushing boundaries, identifying comfort zones, and figuring out life’s challenges as they made their ways into manhood. She reveled in her sons’ mutual trust and reliance on one another.
It was that summer, I believe, when the brakes went out on their VW bus coming back from a sailing vacation in Maine. Tom and the boys were giddy in their recounting of the event when they arrived home.
When I moved to D.C. in 1980 to work for the U.S. Department of Education, I would have coffee with Cely in Georgetown, on occasion. She was becoming more and more of an impassioned advocate working for denuclearization, population control, and protecting the environment. She invited me to share Thanksgiving with them in 1984. And, of course, I was at Tom’s Memorial Service in 1985.
It was also in 1985 when I got married. Cely and my Tia arranged for a lovely party for family and friends before my wedding day. Cely’s emotions were still raw from the pain of Tom’s passing. And, after I walked up the aisle to the altar, Celestine fled the chapel in tears–my Aunt Netty three paces behind her. It was such a human moment. A moment of love and pain. A family moment. All of our hearts were with her.
After that, I was a military wife and civil servant moving around the U.S. and Europe for many years. Other than seeing each other at brief family gatherings, both happy and sad, Celestine did not reemerge in my life until the early 2000’s. I was managing the largest education initiative since the normalization of relations between the U.S. Government and the government of the People’s Republic of China—the U.S.-China E-Language Project. We were developing cutting edge voice recognition, animation, and gaming methods to teach Chinese students English and American students Chinese.
I knew of Cely’s and Sonny’s environmental advocacy work and work in China and I invited them to come brainstorm simple conservation practices so we could weave them into the scripts of the software. They drove out to meet with me and my colleagues from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Coastline Community College, and M.I.T. They recommended using the simple act of turning off a light switch which we used. It was a hugely productive brainstorming session that ended with our ongoing correspondence.
Two or three years later, I was so happy to share with Celestine and Sonny that the results of an independent evaluation of the computer program tested with middle-school students in Gansu Province showed that the lowest performing students made the largest gains and they were motivated to learn English through gaming. Also, we were able to measure that their teachers became open to different forms of teaching. And maybe, I laughed with Cely, the children in Lanzhou were turning the lights off in their own homes more often.
I continued to work on international education issues for the government, benchmarking the top Asian performing countries’ practices with our own until I retired in 2016. I traveled to China 30 times and worked in Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. I had a wonderful, meaningful career that I owe in no small part to having my eyes opened at a very young age by Cely and Tom.
Today, I have a new husband, new home in Vero Beach, Florida, and a new calling as vice-chair of the Democrats of Indian River. Unfortunately, Cely and I only communicated sporadically over the last couple of years via Facebook and I am sorry about that.
And now, the magic of my beautiful, joyful, passionate cousin is gone. Still, I believe, her influence continues today as I advocate for policies that can make a difference for my community, my state, my country, and even the world.
In closing, I was touched by these words in Cely’s obituary:
Some virtues are self-effacing: kindness is discreet; wisdom does not claim to be wise; true generosity gives in secret. So the best-lived lives are sometimes the least known. Such was the life of Celestine Favrot Arndt.
At my own father’s memorial, my brother Robert wrote similar words about my Dad, Scipio de Kanter, that I will close with and amend for Cely:
Sometimes, rarely, a woman comes quietly into this world; lives in peace, and gives of herself; sometimes anonymously, always unselfishly; makes little of the wrongs done to her in favor of the greater good of all.
And when she dies, the deep wake of her spirit tumbles endlessly outward; first through us, who knew and loved her, then on to our children—those living and yet unborn.
We have experienced, lived in, the great power of Celestine’s gentleness, kindness, unconditional love and humility.
We are so, so much the better for having known the “extraordinarily thoughtful, gracious, kind-hearted, and warm” Celestine Favrot Arndt who gave each and every one of us the gifts of love and joy.
Favrot Siblings at Amie & Patrick’s Wedding 2015