Grandmother's memory honored through bingo
An artist remembers her grandmother with a party to raise scholarship funds

By MARK ST. JOHN ERICKSON | 247-4783
March 25, 2008

Digg Del.icio.us Facebook Fark Google Newsvine Reddit Yahoo Print Reprints Post comment Text size: When Kelly O'Neill was growing up in Hampton, her grandmother was one of her favorite pals. Even as a teenager, she always looked forward to the drive from Willow Oaks to her grandmother's Virginia Beach home.

There, the young girl knew she'd be greeted with genuine affection and interest. She also learned early on that Annie Steinmetz was a woman full of fun — and rarely shy about pulling O'Neill into a world of friendship and games that sometimes meant playing bingo with 16 cards at once.

Such attachments made it hard for the grown-up graphic designer when Steinmetz died in 1999. Three years passed before O'Neill found a way to beat her yearly case of the blues by staging an all-girls bingo party at her home in memory of her fun-loving grandma.

Clever handmade invitations, unique flower arrangements and tasty desserts helped give the gatherings of two to three dozen women an instant reputation. So did the whimsical jewelry that O'Neill made and gave out to each of her astonished girlfriends as prizes.

Nearly a decade after her grandmother's death, O'Neill still remembers their last visit. She'd brought a bouquet of pink roses to Steinmetz at her nursing home for Valentine's Day, and — when she finally turned to go — the ailing older woman reached out and asked her to stay.

One week later, Steinmetz passed away. "She was hard to lose," says O'Neill, now 42, "and it was hard to forget."

Changing the way she remembered her grandmother proved to be the solution. But not until O'Neill's parents gave her a tabletop bingo game did she understand how to make that happen.

Designing and piecing her invitations together by hand helped make an otherwise ordinary bingo game special. Artfully wrapped Chinese take-out boxes filled with her jewelry enhanced the sense of occasion still more, as did the showy flowers and savory deserts.

But it wasn't until her gang of girl friends came together for a night of camaraderie and fun that the package felt complete.

"It was like — Oh, my God! — this is totally my granny!" O'Neill says. "It was the kind of event that she would have loved to attend."

So impressed was Tammy Flynn that she kept her invitation as a souvenir. And she wasn't the only one who left O'Neill's home feeling that she'd taken part in a rare kind of social occasion.

"The invitation was a gift in itself. It was just so over the top!" says Flynn, who works in Hampton's Neighborhood Office. "I kept mine on my refrigerator for a year and a half because I loved it so much."

O'Neill's memorable bracelets and earrings became highly valued, too. As the party grew in size, they even began serving as a kind of badge indicating membership in a special circle.

Many women from that original group still work alongside their friend, forming what she laughingly refers to as her "Secret Service." In addition to helping produce the extravagant invitations, they also beat the bushes in an ever-expanding network of acquaintances and friends, gathering the hoard of prizes, refreshments and decorations needed for an event that has tripled in size since going public in 2005.

"It's all for a good cause, of course," says Jo Martin Harding, who has donated artful gifts from both her former boutique at Port Warwick and the new shop she runs at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center. "But this is also about that sisterhood thing. Kelly's always helped me out in the past with my causes. So it's my duty — and my pleasure — to help her out with hers."

As both Flynn and Harding acknowledge, the circle of women that has grown up since the first party in 2003 is not only dominated by professional women but also includes a disproportionate number of entrepreneurs. Many work in design, marketing, graphic arts or similarly creative fields, adding to the sense of independent spirits linked by a common connection.

Some of the women sit in tight-knit groups of their own, giving their tables such names as the "Desperate Housewives of the Salt Ponds" and "Girls of Summer." The "Flamingo Floozies" have walked in wearing heart-shaped pink eyeglasses and matching feather boas.

Similar bouts of silliness have became one of the event's hallmarks, including the exuberant dances of triumph that take place whenever some lucky woman scores a raffle prize or pulls a winning bingo number.

"Even if you're not into bingo, this is always a lot of fun," Harding says. "It's like we all suddenly turned 12 years old."