Fani attended Franklin Elementary School in Chicago from 1914 to 1922.
Fani worked at the restaurant since she was 7-8 years old.
“Fani and I would sneak and watch the undertaker work in the basement of the building next to ours. In 1916 it was Fani’s and my job to clean the spittoons. The old man had two wooden barrels of beer. The hobos would want the foam but so would we.” [*JPP]
Fani was the most fragile member of the family. She was very petite. She had an appendicitis operation.
One time Fanny and Katharine were home alone and heard bumps on the wall. Fanny got a butcher knife and hammer for protection. They locked themselves in the sun room. They went to bed with the knife under the pillow. They were so scared, they couldn't sleep. When they finally got the courage to look to see what the bumping was, it turned out to be a bunch of stray cows.
"Fani wanted so badly to go to high school. She just cried and cried. She begged the Old Man to let her go to high school. When she graduated from Knickerbocker High School they prophesied that she would become the greatest author that had ever been. She used to write such wonderful, wonderful stories. She was not only a wonderful writer, she would have us kids just begging her to tell a story. She was a story teller. But, her father said, 'No way' and put her in the restaurant and made her work." [*HPT]
"I remember one time Peter was going to the YMCA and Fani drew a poster for him. There was some kind of a contest. It had a little boy, a sad looking sack. He was looking up at a YMCA sign and saying, 'Gee, I wish I could join the YMCA.' They thought that was the cutest poster and Peter won the contest. Peter was good at that. I used to do his homework for him. One time he had to write a story about the man to the moon. So, I wrote the story for him. He still gives himself credit for that but I wrote it for him." [*HPT]
“Fani was so good to me. She told me about the facts of life. She explained that I was going to be getting a period and not to be frighted. She said I should just steal a napkin from the linen closet when I needed them, no one would know the difference. No one had told her and she was so scared when she first started bleeding. Fani was always very, very good to me." [*HPT]
“Lucky Fani got a real good guy. Andy published a little paper. Somehow she got a hold of one and wrote to him. He wrote back to her. And they started a correspondence where they really became close, crazy about each other. He wanted to see her and wanted to see her and she just wouldn’t. I remember reading one of the letters he wrote to her. “Fani, I don’t care if you had only one tooth left and it was wobbling like a branch on a tree . ..“ She had just lost a couple of teeth at the time. He wanted to see her but at that time she was going through that stage, that phobia, where she wouldn’t go out because she was afraid. She had that about 3 or 4 years before she met Andy. She would write to him and him to her but she would never go out with him. Well, one day he took the bull by the horns and came to the house. He knocked at the door and Dodo answered. He said, “I am Andy Chervence and I would like to see Fani.” Dodo went in and said “Fani, Andy is here.”“Well, he has a lot of nerve coming here! He shouldn’ t do that!” She became very upset. We had a little screened in porch. Dodo talked Fani into meeting him out there in privacy. Andy was a saint. He would come after that one day after another. Little by little he got her to go out of the door. Then he would get her to go as far as the fence gate. Then he got her to go a half a block. Pretty soon he got her to without fear. Just a little after that they decided to get married.” [*HPT]
She married Andy when she was already 36 years old. They did not have any children.
Fani was a dedicated artist. She painted on everything - canvas, lamps,
wood, rocks, ... when they were first married, they lived below a renown
Japanese artist. He taught Fani much of Japanese style. (He did the murals
in the Los Angeles courtroom.) She went during her break to the Art
Institute. For a while she took a course in art there.
For a while Fani
was a Clothes Designer Apprentice.
Fani was born 40 years before her time, an original hippie. She smoked her own rolled cigarettes.
Fani called her brother and sister-in-law “St. Peter & Holy Mother”.
After attending one of Pete and Helen's family parties, Fani coined the family saying, 'It was a lot of work but it was worth it.'
Andy and Fani lived in a Coachhouse apartment on Gunnison in Chicago. They moved to Cabool, Missouri for several years in the early seventies. Then they moved into “Prevenas Arms” apartment building in Elgin until Andy’s death. Peter and Helen Prevenas and Tom and Grace Prevenas lived at “Prevenas Arms”, too. Then Fani lived with her niece, Patty Harding, until her death.
Fani had cardiac arrhythmia and atherosclerotic heart disease. Her immediate cause of death was acute myocardial infarction. Fani’s body was cremated and her ashes were buried in Elmwood Park Cemetery in the Prevenas/Thein lots.
[*HPT Helen Prevenas Thein, *JPP James Peter Prevenas]
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