Verla Swanson loved selling Avon cosmetics, going to musicals and “getting dolled up” no matter where she was going.
Also, Swanson, who died at age 77 on Nov. 29 in Aurora, knew everything about the people in her southeast Denver neighborhood, said longtime friend and neighbor Sally Tourney.
“Now I won’t know what’s going on,” Tourney said.
Swanson, who died of cancer and complications after abdominal surgery, was an “Avon Lady” for 35 years. The job was one of the ways she supported herself and her daughter, Delana Anderson, of Lemoore, Calif., after Swanson was divorced.
Swanson rang doorbells for years, but recently she did most of the selling by phone to longtime customers.
Meeting new people was one of the reasons Swanson sold Avon, and many customers became her good friends.
Despite two divorces and being widowed once, Swanson always said she thought she could survive whatever life threw her.
“She always believed she had an angel in the corner watching over her,” Anderson said.
Swanson loved to shop for clothes and shoes, and she’d bribe her daughter with offers of a nice lunch if she would go shopping with her.
But she was no spendthrift. Swanson told her daughter she’d prefer “having money in the bank than being spendy-trendy and having gadgets and new cars.”
Ever a Denver booster, she would tell her daughter and son-in-law, Gary Anderson, during visits to Lemoore, “Why don’t you move out of this hellhole and come back to Denver?”
“She didn’t hold anything back,” Anderson said.
Verla Lou Brink was born July 30, 1930, in Frankfort, S.D., and was reared in Redfield, S.D., where she graduated from high school.
She learned to sing and play the piano and trombone, and she took baton twirling and tap and ballroom dancing. Swanson, who was raised by her grandmother, Ida Mae Brink, the owner of a music store, learned how to work early — keeping the pianos dusted.
Piano playing and dancing lasted all her life. She played ragtime almost exclusively.
After Swanson’s death, her daughter found a bottle of champagne her mother and an unknown partner had won in a 1991 ballroom-dance competition. It was unopened because “she wasn’t much of a drinker,” said Anderson.
Swanson was married and divorced from Arlo Mortimer and the late Robert Norby, and was married to Robert Swanson, who died.
In addition to her daughter, she is survived by three grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
