|
a.
|
Note: There is a story I need to tell about Dorothy. After I retired (in 1993), my sister and I took a trip to Nebraska to visit our mother's parents' farm near Bayard. Our grandparents were long dead by then but we had visited the farm many times when we were children and we wanted to see if anything was left standing. (Our grandparents had retired from farming and moved to Idaho about 1960.) My mother had asked me to stop by the Bayard Cemetery to locate the graves of her Hillman grandparents. The ten-year search for their graves is another story. However, my sister and I did find several DeVault stones in Bayard Cemetery. At the time I did not know who any of these people were nor how they were related. One very nice stone was for Dorothy Bell and Marjorie Beth DeVault. Marjorie died in 1948, but Dorothy's side of the stone did not have a death date. Eventually my interest in genealogy led me to want to determine when Dorothy died and have her death date added to her stone. I asked my mom about Dorothy and learned that she and Marjorie were twins and my dad's aunts. My mom recalled that I had met Marjorie shortly before her death when my mother had taken me to visit her in the hospital. Marjorie was dying of cancer. Mom did not know exactly when Dorothy died. The last time my mother was in Nebraska was when my grandmother, Cecile DeVault, had passed away. Mom said that Dorothy was not at Cecile's funeral but she had a vague recollection that someone who did attend the funeral told her that Dorothy died in the mid-1960s. I was not able to find Dorothy in the Social Security Death Index. Sometime later I contacted another DeVault relative that told me that Dorothy, now probably long dead, had been alive and living in a nursing home in Gearing, Nebraska in the 1980s. I decided to get serious about learning Dorothy's death date. I looked on the internet and there were only two nursing homes listed in Gearing. I called the first one and spoke to the receptionist. I asked her if a Dorothy DeVault had ever stayed at that nursing home and was there anyone there that might have known Dorothy. The receptionist said, "Yes, I know Dorothy, would you like to talk to her?" I almost fell off my chair. At the time Dorothy was about 98 years old. It took a while for Dorothy to understand who I was. I had not seen Dorothy since my extended visit to Nebraska in the summer of 1956. Judy and I quickly planned a trip to Nebraska to visit Dorothy. I took a number of photographs I had of Dorothy and her sister when they were young. I also had some photos of the family home. We also gave Dorothy a yellow quilt that Judy and made. A couple of years later Judy and I took my mother on a trip to Nebraska and we again visited Dorothy. On both of these visits I was amazed at Dorothy's recollection of things in the distant past. She was confused about other things such as not knowing why her sister, Maude, had not come to visit her in the nursing home. (Maude had died in 1975 Dorothy passed away in 2002, just a few months short of her one hundredth birthday. On my next visit to Nebraska I discovered that her death date was still not on her stone. We stopped by the Herstead Monument Company. It turned out that they had made the stone when Marjorie died. We were given a copy of the original work order that showed that Dorothy had chosen the design and paid for the stone. We made arrangements to have Dorothy's death date added to the stone.
GRAVE STONE
DeVault Dorothy Bell Marjorie Beth 1902 + 2002 1902 + 1948
|
