'Maw made everything fun': Johnette 'Inky' Eckstine lived life to the fullest

Editor’s note: Each Sunday, The Herald-Mail runs “A Life Remembered.” Each story in this continuing series takes a look back — through the eyes of family, friends, co-workers and others — at a member of the community who died recently. Today’s “A Life Remembered” is about Johnette “Inky” Whadawn Eckstine, who died on May 10 at the age of 82. Her obituary appeared in The Herald-Mail on May 17.

Johnette “Inky” Eckstine was quite a character — or, more accurately, an entire cast of characters rolled into one energetic woman who lived life to the fullest and made it fun for others.

She costumed herself as icons ranging from the Easter Bunny to Lady Gaga (one of her favorite singers), she sang like Patsy Cline (another fave), was accomplished at baseball, softball, bowling and other games and was a poet, collector, hostess, friend and doting grandmother known as “Maw.”

“Maw made everything fun,” granddaughter Julia Eckstine said. “Every memory I have of her is having fun.”

'Always dancing'

Julia and her sister, Sarah Eckstine, grew up with both sets of grandparents as neighbors east of Boonsboro.

Holidays were always a big deal around Maw's house. The entire yard and patio would be done up for Halloween, for example.

Julia liked ballerinas as a girl, so she and her sister each got their own pink-themed Christmas trees decorated with ballerinas and Barbie dolls.

And during Julia's first year in college, Maw sent holiday decorations so she wouldn't miss out.

But just about any day was kind of like a holiday at Maw's house.

Julia said they grew up listening to their grandmother's 45 rpm records.

"She alway had music playing and was always dancing all through the house," Julia said.

She had a passion for all kinds of music, but was especially a fan of Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Cher and Lady Gaga.

She dressed up as Lady Gaga, had a life-size cardboard cutout of the singer at her home and once rented a limousine to take a group of friends to a Cher concert.

Inky was more than just a member of the Patsy Cline fan club.

Niece Susan Vinzant remembers spending summers as a child at her aunt's house as she sang duets with the late country artist's recordings during household chores.

"She had a beautiful voice," Susan said. "I would just love when she would put her records on the record player, and she would do her ironing or vacuum and sing her songs really loud."

Inky actually loved to clean and kept the house neat as a pin.

She had a flair for the flamboyant. Over the years her cars included a white, 1968 Volkswagen Beetle convertible, and, at the end of her life, a zippy, red Kia Soul. It was the chipmunks in that cute ad campaign for the Soul a few years back that caught her eye.

She loved collecting and had an impressive hoard of baseball cards and memorabilia, coins, thimbles, music boxes and other things.

'We had an agreement'

Besides all the fun at home, there were family trips to places like Disney World and Ocean City.

She loved the beach and low-stakes gambling, especially scratch-off lottery tickets.

"We had an agreement," husband Dave Eckstine said with a grin. "I could drink beer as long as she could gamble."

And she was convinced that she was going to win the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, but never did — exactly.

Longtime friend Bobbi Baker once teased her about it, posing as the game's Prize Patrol with a "congratulations" balloon and a dollar bill.

"We had a lot of good times," Bobbi said.

They played sandlot softball together, worked as bell ringers for the Salvation Army during Christmas and made peanut butter eggs at Easter for St. Andrews United Methodist Church in Hagerstown.

The pair became friends in 1970 when they met at the home of Inky's niece in Hagerstown.

"The first day I met her I threw her in the pool with her clothes on," Bobbi recalled. "We were just carrying on."

'How I got my nickname'

Inky was a fan of all kinds of games including cornhole, dominoes, horseshoes and poker.

A group of six friends used to meet for monthly poker games, according to Bobbi.

"We did a lot of eatin' and a lot of talkin'," she said with a laugh.

Inky always had yellow legal pads close at hand to scratch down thoughts as inspiration struck.

"She could write a poem in no time," Bobbi said.

Inky's self-published book of musings, poems, short stories and remembrances, "A Little Piece of Me," reveals in the first entry how she got her nickname when she was about 3 years old.

The family was living in Hagerstown's South End at the time in a house with a large yard where they kept a big black pig named Inky.

"Dad said I would scratch Inky's back and ears. Well, one day Inky disappeared," she wrote. "I imagine I asked questions. Where? When? Why?

"I only know that after Inky disappeared, my dad started calling me Inky and that's how I got my nickname."

"She didn't say what was on the table for dinner, did she?" Bobbi joked as Julia read from the book.

It includes the story of how she caught the baseball bug as kid.

"I don't believe a day went by in the summer that I didn't play ball. If you couldn't get a game going I would play pitch and catch with one of the kids in the neighborhood," she wrote. "We had four girls including myself and eight boys. Yeah, you're right, I played ball with the boys. Some of the girls were really good but they didn't like the game, so I ended up playing with the boys.

"I was better than most of them."

"She didn't throw like a girl," said Dave, who knows the game well, having umpired Little League for 40-plus years beginning back when their son, Jeb Eckstine, first joined up. "If anyone knows ball, they'll understand that right away."

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Dave met his wife in the late 1950s when he ran an Atlantic gas station on Dual Highway in Hagerstown and her brother-in-law brought her with him one day to service a pinball machine there.

That somehow led to a date at an American Legion dance and, eventually, their wedding on March 18, 1960.

Dave soon went to work for the Sharrett Inc. auto dealership until his retirement in 2010 after 47 years of service.

Inky over the years worked in Hagerstown at the E.J. Fennel Inc. garment factory and volunteered at the Holly Place and Sommerford House & Place senior living communities.

She helped coach girls softball at South Hagerstown High School.

"She probably knew more about the game than the official coach," Dave said.

Inky and Bobbi had asked Dave to ump their sandlot games, but he decided against it.

"I just though it was in my best interest not to," he said, laughing.

'It's like she's been preparing us for it'

Though health problems slowed the cancer survivor near the end of her life, Inky's passing was somewhat sudden and unexpected.

Just a week before, Julia said, they played the Wii video game system for about three hours, and "she beat me at every game."

She walked to the ambulance after showing symptoms of a stroke, "and that was the last time we saw her conscious," Julia said.

"I feel like that was the best way for Maw to go because she would not have wanted to suffer," Julia said. "I don't think she had any awareness that she was suffering, so that was good for her."

She didn't fear death, and didn't want anyone else to.

Sarah said that, years ago, Maw commissioned her to make a recording of the songs she wanted to have played at her memorial service and took her and her sister to the funeral home to pick out the pendants they would wear containing her ashes.

She offered Sarah the key to the family mausoleum to be displayed in a school project, and had her take her picture in the family plot at Rose Hill Cemetery in Hagerstown.

"It's extremely hard that she passed, but in a weird way it's like she's been preparing us for it," Sarah said. "That she wouldn't want us to be upset is making it easier to cope with.

"I know that if we were just laying around moping she would put on the song, 'Locomotion' and say, "Get your (selves) up, go outside, play cornhole and listen to music.

"Just knowing that she is like that and would want us to be going on with our lives has made it a little easier."

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: A Life Remembered: 'Inky' Eckstine was a cast of characters by herself