Mrs. Evelyn Arbeeny
Any of you that are familiar with the Tyketto story and how the band came to be in our formative years will know how essential a role Michael Arbeeny’s family played in making the band what it was to become.
When other arrangements fell apart, the Arbeeny family opened up their doors and their hearts to 3 of their son’s new friends and kept us going at a time when we were still trying to write "the perfect song", and learn how to make music together.
It was an amazing, musical house with the 6 brothers and sisters coming and going at all hours, loads of family coming in for Sunday dinners (to which the band was always graciously invited), and a constant blur of activity that words like "bustling" fail to adequately describe. It was also a healthy, happy environment for us to make our homes and make our music for a time. And we weren’t the only ones. Michael’s sister, Audrey, had been singing for several bands before we arrived and his brother, Ashley, had a huge sounding thrash band that would take turns with us using the family basement for rehearsals. More often than not the family upstairs would watch television without really hearing the programs as the bands below would rumble and howl and vibrate the furniture upstairs around the room.
The Arbeeny’s thrived on the activity and never made anyone feel unwelcome. It simply wasn’t in their nature.
I once asked Mr. Arbeeny how it was that they could handle having so many people in and out of their home all of the time. He told me, "Dan, if there’s room in your heart, there’s room in your home." If anything best describes the family philosophy, this is it.
On Sunday, August 9th, Michael’s Mother, Evelyn Arbeeny passed away. She lived her life surrounded by a large loving family, endless amounts of friends and also, a great number of people that called her "Mom". I’m proud to say that I was one of them. She was a musician herself and had a beautiful singing voice and she and I would talk all the time about various singers currently in the charts and which ones we liked and which ones we didn’t. Oh, and "yes please, I’d love a second helping of lasagne". For those of us that were a long way from our own families, being in their house made us feel so much better and a little less lonely. When I think of Mrs. Arbeeny I think of compassion, support, good humor and a good sized serving of old world wisdom. She lived a great life of 80 full years surrounded by 6 children, 8 grandchildren, 3 great grand children and at least 3 rock bands.
We all want to extend our thoughts and prayers to the Arbeeny family for their loss.
What a fantastic woman she is!
With Love,
Danny Vaughn