'Cheerleader for Northampton' Eva Trager dies of kidney disease at 65
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NORTHAMPTON - Eva Trager will be remembered for an indomitable spirit, a feistiness that belied her tiny frame and a big heart. She will also be remembered for being squarely at the forefront of the city's rebirth that began in the 1970s.
As cofounder, with ex-husband Bill Trager, of Country Comfort, the women's clothing and accessories store at 153 Main St., Trager kick-started a business-centered movement that transformed a city and ushered in the arts wave that followed, said those who knew her. Trager died Wednesday morning at Cooley Dickinson Hospital after a long battle with kidney disease. She was 65.
There will be a celebration of Eva Trager's life this Friday at Country Comfort, starting at noon.
Bill Trager, who said he plans to come to Northampton soon to deal with the store, said the business will close.
"Eva and I had built everything," he said. "It's appropriate I get to dismantle it."
He called Country Comfort Eva Trager's legacy. The couple had no children.
"That became her life. She served three generations of Northamptonites," said Trager. "When John Gare died they named a parking garage after him. They should build an Eva Trager bridge."
On the bench outside her storefront where Trager was known to sit, friends and well-wishers Wednesday left flowers and notes next to a framed picture of her, hours after she died.
"It's a sad day," said Cathy Cross, whose clothing store stands right next to Trager's. "I wanted to break down every day the last few weeks but I kept it together helping."
Cross said Trager herself was at work last Thursday.
"That was Eva," said Cross. "Eva was feisty, sweet, and worked so hard. She was the Queen of Main Street. We'd meet each morning, sweep our sidewalks and had laughs. To be such great neighbors for 28 years in the same type of business is unusual, but we just had a great relationship."
"She was always laughing, always had a great story," said Cross. "Both of us would have just read the Gazette and there'd be something in there we needed to talk about. We both shared the same work ethic: you needed to be in your store and work it, day in, day out, seven days a week. Eva and Bill started the Northampton renaissance."
Friends weigh in
"She was the unelected mayor of Northampton," said Priscilla Kane Hellweg, executive director of Enchanted Circle Theater, a longtime friend and former employee of Trager's, one of her "girls" from the store's earliest days.
"I was fresh out of college but she helped me find my life's work," said Hellweg. "Our energy and creativity met. It was clothing and accessories for real people, not about high style. It was about comfort, real life and beauty. The fabrics were always delicious cottons, the jewelry always exciting.
"Country Comfort can be credited for making Northampton the arts town that it is," added Hellweg. "They were among the first few handfuls of businesses that saw something in this city.
"Eva had common-sense brilliance," said Hellweg. "She was one of my mentors. I don't know if I ever told her that. We like to call each other our chosen family."
Trager's legion of friends were with her at the end, said Hellweg, "people sitting with her through the night, all ages, all walks of life. She knew people as a human heart. She had pulmonary edema, one of the difficulties she struggled with. The chemistry in Eva's body was very fragile. The last three months were brutal."
Her last conversation with Trager before her recent turn for the worse had to do with cooking, as usual, by phone, Trager cooking lamb chops, Hellweg roast pork, each dash of this or pinch of that described and debated.
"She loved kids," said Hellweg. "She was Auntie Eva to my boys and to so many other children."
Laura Ewald, the Gazette sales representative who managed her accounts for 32 years, said her relationship with Trager was unlike any other she had. "She was this little ball of fire about 5 feet tall," said Ewald. "I'd go there every Thursday - if I didn't show up she'd call and say, 'You all right?' She'd bring me candy on my birthday."
"Our conversations would be like Seinfeld," said Ewald, "just talk about nothing. She'd have me go behind the counter and answer phones. She went out for coffee and left me in charge - how many people do that?"
"She was the store," said Ewald. "People just came in to say hello. She would recommend other stores. She was about the whole town - a big cheerleader for Northampton."
"You didn't just go in there to buy a dress - you got the whole Eva experience," said Ewald. "She knew her clients and carried lines for 30-something years. I could use ads from 10 years and they'd still be appropriate."
Ewald still has Trager's Christmas card on her desk. "It's the only one I saved," she said. "Isn't that funny?"
"She was something else, a great sister," said Trager's brother, Dr. Ezra Riber, 58, of South Carolina, who was at her bedside at the end, as were many relatives and friends. Trager and her two brothers were first-generation Americans, born and raised in New York City. "Our parents came here from Europe, the usual Ellis Island stories," said Riber.
"She introduced me to so many things that are still with me today. I'm a huge hockey fan and she bought me my first pair of skates. And if you're talking about that desert island stuff - it's coffee mocha ice cream. I looked into her freezer yesterday and she had four quarts of Haaggen-Dazs. She was always there for me with that big sister advice, 'guy' advice about the important things in life, advice about women."
As for medical advice, Eva Trager was pretty much tapped out with that. She'd battled kidney disease for over a decade. A Gazette story published in 2000 shows Trager undergoing hemodialysis, frustrated at the valuable time spent away from her beloved store.
"I'd never sat still for four hours before in my life so it's a definite torture for me," she said at the time. "I'm dying to get out of here the minute I can."
"She had a transplant 10 years ago," said Riber. "It served her well; worked for over 10 years. But it did start to fail. Not much you can do. At the end she was ready to let the fight go."
"I think she saw me more as a little brother than a doctor," said Riber. "She was fading. I cajoled her a little bit about not taking medical advice."
Mostly the siblings reminisced. "She was always in style," said Riber. "I remember coming home from school with black pants, black shoes and white socks. The look she gave me. She took me to a local men's store and dressed me up right. If it wasn't for her I'd be wearing stripes and plaids."
Riber always understood what his sister meant to Northampton and vice versa.
"Anytime I came up here I'm Eva's little brother - that made me a celebrity," said Riber. "She got me a job one summer at Andiamo. I skated at Paradise Pond. As a New Yorker you think everything begins and ends there. She introduced me to Northampton. 'See?' she'd say. 'What did I tell you?'"
Humble beginnings
Bill Trager, who has lived in New Mexico for years, calls his ex-wife his best friend. "We knew each other 42 years," he said.
Eva Riber, a clothing buyer from Queens and Bill Trager, who worked for a clothing manufacturer in Manhattan, were introduced one day in the late 1960s and kindred sparks were ignited. They married in 1969, with the dream of opening some sort of clothing business of their own. But where?
"In 1970 we quit our jobs and traveled the U.S. with a tent and a station wagon," said Bill Trager. "We were gone a year, all over the U.S. and Canada."
On a tip, the couple drove to Northampton in the cold and snowy December of 1971. They ran into Sam Goldman, a property owner who wanted to promote Northampton. "He was one of the first people who saw the potential in vacant second and third floors in Northampton," said Bill Trager. He also saw enormous potential in these two young people before him. "He was leaving for his honeymoon," said Bill Trager. "He said, 'Why don't you take my house for two weeks?' He didn't even know us. Well, we saw enough of that town in those two weeks and liked the feeling."
They borrowed $4,000 in 1972 and Country Comfort, its name inspired by the Rod Stewart song that was playing on the stereo in their tiny Market Street apartment, was born, right next to the police station on Center Street.
"It was a success the minute the doors opened," said Bill Trager. "A year later Fitzwilly's opened. You had Bran-Win Pharmacy, Whalen's, Foster Farrar on the corner - it was right at the beginning of the city's first renaissance."
A couple years later the business moved to Main Street.
Bill Trager said he and his wife, even long after their divorce in the late 1980s, were soulmates. "We talked by phone once a week," he said.
"Anytime I had a problem, Eva wanted to solve it, no matter if I called her day or night," he said. "That's how she took care of me. I called her one night and mentioned I had no health insurance. You should have heard her. She encouraged me to get on this program right away. It turned out to be monumental - I ended up having a vascular bypass. I would have never had the money to pay for it. She always had my best interests in mind."
Comments
Eva will be missed
I was so fond of Eva Trager. She befriended me, and my young daughter, more than twenty years ago, when we lived downtown. We'd stop in and say hello often. She was such a kind and caring spirit, and will be sadly missed.