She Touched the Future

"She may have been little. But she was a giant of love!" After Eva Marie Eaton Osier died in 2018 at the age of 94, friends wrote these words in a sympathy card to this book's author-her daughter, Nina. There could not have been a better epitaph, although Eva Marie needed no gravestone because she chose to be cremated and join her ashes with those of Nina's father who was her great love. During her long lifetime Eva Marie accomplished many things, most notably helping hundreds of students who came under her influence or her direct instruction. But before and after her career, and even during the five years she devoted to stay-at-home motherhood, she lived those words in other ways. Eva Marie did not always make traditional choices. She came of age during World War II, as part of the Greatest Generation-one whose members, while truly great in steadfast devotion to their duty, rarely distinguished themselves as rebels. Not so Eva Marie! She went, always, where the spirit of love guided her to go. This book is her story. Its author is not and does not profess to be a professional biographer. Only a loving daughter, whose gifts both parents encouraged; and for whom Eva Marie set forth a shining example of what a woman's life can be when she does what God has fitted her to do, instead of limiting herself to what society expects.