Evangeline C. "Peggy" Payne

Evangeline Constantine Payne – “Peggy” to all who knew her – died peacefully in her sleep on April 25th, 2024. She was 100 years old.

The daughter of Greek immigrants, Peggy was born July 12, 1923, in Birmingham, Alabama, where her father owned a chain of well-known barbecue restaurants. The oldest of four children and noted for her intelligence, Peggy graduated high school at 16 before graduating at 20 from Birmingham Southern College, where she was both valedictorian of her class and a member of the prestigious academic society Phi Beta Kappa.

By the time she finished graduate studies in History and Political Science at American university in Washington DC, she was fluent not only in English and Greek but also in French and Spanish.

It was in Washington DC, in 1945, where she met a man from Omaha -- George H. Payne, at the time serving in the US Navy as a steel specialist. They stayed in touch after the war, when Peggy worked for two years in Madrid, Spain, for the U.S. State Department – two years she was to treasure and mention frequently the rest of her life. After returning home, she and George married in 1948, and the newlyweds moved to Omaha.

The 1950s was a busy decade for Peggy. She gave birth to two sons – Nicholas in 1950, and George Jr. in 1953 – and she embarked on a career teaching French and Spanish at Omaha University, later UNO. Meanwhile, her husband George joined his father as co-owner of the Virginia Café, a downtown Omaha institution. Peggy and George welcomed a third son, Alexander, in 1961.

In 1966, fate dealt Peggy a heavy blow with the first of two bouts with throat cancer, and her teaching career came to a sudden end. She survived that first bout well and resumed a normal life, but the cancer returned in 1981, this time occasioning a total laryngectomy at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York. For the rest of her life, she spoke only with the aid of a hand-held device that, she joked to children, made her sound like a robot, but she never once let this debility stand in her way. For years she led a counseling and support group called “Lost and Found Voices” that helped ease the difficult transition for new laryngentomees.

Peggy’s many social activities in Omaha included the French and Spanish Clubs and, at St. John’s Greek Orthodox Church, both the Philoptochos Society and the Daughters of Penelope. She never stopped educating herself and was a constant and wide-ranging reader, mostly of history. A lifelong film lover, she so frequented Film Streams that donors thought to name the big theater at the Dundee after her. After her husband George retired, they traveled the world on cruise ships and frequently visited their children in North Carolina and California. She continued an active, independent life into widowhood, driving and living alone until nearly 95. During her final years at Aksarben Village, she was looked after by a cadre of extraordinary and devoted caregivers, and, always elegantly dressed, she continued to receive a steady stream of visitors of all ages until just last week.

Family and friends knew her as a brilliant, no-nonsense woman with an often hilariously sharp tongue and zero patience for hypocrisy or malarkey. But they also knew that beneath her tough-as-nails exterior beat a heart as deep and wide as the ocean.

Peggy Payne is proceeded in death by husband George H. Payne and sons Nicholas C. Payne and Dr. George H. Payne II. She is survived by son C. Alexander Payne of Omaha; daughter-in-law Paula Payne of High Point NC; grandsons George P. Payne III of Omaha and Benjamin H. Payne of Raleigh NC; and granddaughters Patil E. Payne of Los Angeles and Despina E. Payne of Athens, Greece.

Private family interment. 
Memorial Service Saturday, June 8, 2024 at 11:00AM at St. John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church, 602 Park Ave, Omaha, NE.

Donations may be made in her name to St. John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church.




















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