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Note: My Aunt Velma was my favorite of my aunts. She was the older of my father's two sisters and the second oldest in the family, preceeded only by Uncle Harry. Velma loved cats. She used to go out to the barn every morning with fresh milk from the cow they kept (or fresh milk from the store after they no longer kept a cow) for the cats. She had to hide this fact from her brother-in-law Lewis Campbell, because he paid the bills at the house, and felt that feeding the cats was an unconscionable waste of money. She also kept a special cat, an angora, in her bed room. The cat's name was Carmel (for its color) when i knew it. Of course, she had other cats after Carmel died. She worked as a chamber maid at the DunDee motel, about 2 miles from her home when i was a child. It was hard work, but all she was trained for, since her father did not think it was necessary to educate his daughters. She could read enough to read the bible and write enough to sign her name. I do not remember ever seeing a letter she wrote, and she never acknowledged the letters I sent her from time to time nor mentioned their content to me. She made what i thought were the most wonderful pies. She made apple and cherry pies from the fruit they grew on their farm and banana cream and coconut custard pies from grocery store materials. She had natural auburn hair, as did her sister, which they kept in a style that would one day be called "Afro" and as they became gray, both Velma and Helen dyed their hair. Velma wore eye glasses with drak black frames and pointed corner with tiny "stones" in them, "cat" glasses we called them, and often spoke to us children in a wee little meowing cat voice. She loved children, especially me, and I loved her. She was the owner of Boots, the collie-border collie mix that I loved to distraction till its death when I was about 12. I never was told why she never married. She lived all her life as her sister Helen's companion, even moving in with Helen and Lewis after the death of Woodrow, who owned the farm, when Helen and Lewis bought their first house (in New Market).
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