DeVona Marie Anderson

is honored with a Brick from The Children of DeVona Anderson.

In Appreciation of Our Mother - DeVona Anderson

We're delighted that our mother's name is now included in this place reserved for heroines, for her life has been one heroic struggle after another...some large, some small, but nearly all directed toward making the lives of her five children better.

We're deeply grateful to her for so much more than we can list in this space, but here's a partial list of things we thank her for:

For teaching us that you have to work for what you want in life. What she wanted most in life was to make sure her children were cared for, a task she had to assume by herself, and if it meant she had to work numerous jobs to feed and clothe us, well that's what she did...with no self-pity. She was a role model of determination and grit...and perseverance.

For teaching us that honesty was her only policy. Returning a stolen piece of bubble gum to the grocery store was a learning experience remembered for some time.

For teaching us that being poor didn't mean being slovenly. She taught us to take pride in our appearance. Our clothes may have been "homemade" (sometimes from flour sacks even) or perhaps recycled hand-me-downs, but she made sure they were clean, pressed and in style.

For making our home as nice as possible. We were probably the only home in town with a fresh layer of wallpaper every spring, at least after Mom and our grandmother stumbled on their treasure-trove of hundreds of rolls cast-off, clean, but out-of -style wallpaper discarded in the city dump by the town's only furniture store. (We're relatively certain those annual layers of wallpaper were the only thing holding the house together.) And speaking of Grandmother Colwell, we're grateful to our mother for taking her mother into our home, and for inviting this wonderful woman to be an important part of our lives.

For attending a thousand plays, mother-daughter banquets, football games, parades, concerts, for sewing dozens of theater and Halloween costumes, for taking us fishing, playing mother/son softball, and for allowing us to view a large portion of the United States when she loaded us in the car, then took off across the country to provide us memorable summers spent as pipe line "brats."

For teaching us to be resourceful. If there was any of nature's bounty in the vicinity, she could sniff it out: poke, mushrooms, choke cherries, sand plums, elderberries, etc., all found a place on our table thanks to her culinary inventiveness, and anything that could be canned, found its way into her pressure cooker. We're glad she believed in good nutrition...and practiced it.

For allowing us to think independently. She encouraged us to attend all three churches in town, and then to make up our own minds about which one we would join. And what day did we select to be baptized in the Christian Church? Mother's Day, of Course.

For making our home a place where our friends - rich or poor - felt welcome. At any given time, there must have been two to five "extra kids" on hand, often dancing in the "dance" room to music played on a console stereo that she bought us one Christmas, and most likely made payments on forever. More importantly, we thank her for dancing with us.

For always managing to find a place for another kid or two at our table...even when the meal was stretched to the limit. We know now there were times when she left the table without enough to eat.

We thank her for making us clean house or work in the yard on Saturdays, although we hated it back then. For having a sense of humor (with five kids practicing musical instruments at home, this was vital to her sanity). For encouraging us to take new challenges, for doctoring us, correcting our grammar, for allowing us to take in stray dogs, for showing her displeasure (then forgiving easily) when we committed some minor teenage transgression, for being a loving grandmother and a non-interfering mother-in-law...and for being a friend to her adult children.

But most of all, we thank this wonderful lady for showing us that she would always be there for us, a knowledge that we're secure in...even today. As one of her daughter's said recently, "She was a good mom then; she's a good mom now."

We're very proud of DeVona Anderson - our mother, for she's talented in so many ways. We can never repay her for having made our childhood as good as she could make it, nor can we ever express adequately our appreciation for the hundreds of sacrifices she made in our behalf.

Thanks, Mom. You're a true heroine to each of us...and it's time we told you so.

Karen Stacy, Sandra Carter, Nyla Sawyer, Dennis Anderson, Michael Anderson