Irene Lagos Bates

The boy had a bad dream. When he awoke, the nightmare wouldn’t stop. It was a clamor in his head, harsh and blunt, battering him with an almost physical affect. He managed to get himself out of his big-boy bed and padded down the stairs, the footies of his pajamas gathering up around his feet as he descended. He found his mom sitting in the family room, The Dick Van Dyke Show playing on the brand-new black and white television set. She scooped when he appeared in the doorway and held him until she could coo away his demons.
Our mother, Irene Lagos Bates, held an academic scholarship to attend the University of Utah out of high school. It befell her brother-in-law, her sister Peggy’s husband, Keith, to drive her off to college. Her parents had both died by the time she was twelve. Uncle Keith must have sensed mom’s loyalties were divided as they made their way south on that slow road out of Idaho Falls, through Blackfoot, Ft. Hall, Pocatello, Inkom, and Marsh Valley. That boy she’d considered her sweetheart since eighth grade, Jay Harrell Bates, the promising young man who would become our father, had accepted an athletic scholarship to attend Utah State University. As they reached that junction just south of Arimo, that spot on the map where the road south used to split, one fork leading to Logan and the other to Salt Lake City, Keith turned to her and asked, “Which road is it going to be, Irene?”
Mom was asked to give a talk in church, once, one of those “How I gave up orthodoxy and came to embrace the one true faith” spectacles delivered with tears and sighs of joy – or were they despair? – for the spiritual catharsis of the congregation. I didn’t know what the talk was about. All I knew was it was the source of a whole lot of friction in our household. Dad counseled patience, but he couldn’t very well convey the reasons. How do you tell a boy of five that it wasn’t that silly talk that was upsetting his mother so much, but one of life’s difficult choices that had forced her to discard the faith, and to some extent the culture and personal identity, that had sustained her through those difficult years growing up a first generation American, the child of Greek immigrants, in southeast Idaho.
Mom was an educator all her life, a coach and mentor to thousands of students in her time, both at Bonneville High School in Idaho Falls and at Utah State University. She directed the Aggiettes, the cheer- and songleaders, and Sunburst Dancers at Utah State for the better part of twenty-five years, including the last decade or more as director of dance for the popular dinner show, “An Evening with Glenn Miller.” She relished the opportunity encourage young minds and talents. She loved her students. She felt the sacrifices she asked students to make on behalf of the team were worth the few short minutes each year they had to hold the rapt attention of an audience and the pride of accomplishment she hoped they would carry away with them as they went forward into the world.
You see, our mom never did anything half-way. If she was asked to put her energy into something, she was going to do it to the best of her ability or she just wasn’t going to do it. She was either all in, or not at all. You might not have liked her methods. You might have thought she could lighten up a little when you were under her microscope. But you learned never to question her motivations.
I should know. I was that terrified boy of three, quaking with the reverberations of his own nightmares, that she nurtured into a man who could smile with her passing, in fondness for the memories she took with her and with gratitude for legacy she left behind. That is a gift worth having and, in the offering, she must have known, a love that can never die.
Graveside services will be held on Wednesday, November 23rd at 1:00 pm in the Logan City Cemetery.
Funeral arrangements handled by Allen-Hall Mortuary, Logan, Utah. www.allenmortuaries.com
In lieu of flowers, the family requests a donation to the Irene Bates and Peggy Jo Bates Christensen Memorial Scholarship Endowment, http://www.usu.edu/advancement/give/memorial/irenebates .