Anna Edith
Meadors Fuller
Howell

Anna Edith Meadors Fuller Howell passed to her maker May 12, 2017 after living a long and fruitful life of some 104 years.

Anna was a resident of Hawthorne for over seventy years, having come here from Weumka, Okla., where she was born Aug. 19, 1912. She once wrote her biography where she described her youth stating that “she didn’t know her family was poor until she enrolled in the 8th grade in a much larger school”. She recalled when they had cornbread for breakfast because they couldn’t always afford to buy flour; when they could buy flour she and her sisters made their own dresses from the sacks; where getting an orange for Christmas was a true delight. Remembering what a treat a hunk of bologna and a piece of cheese was; bathing in a #2 washtub; laying flat on her stomach to get a drink from a small stream; the outdoor toilet and a Sears & Roebuck catalog; the one room school house with a small wood stove which didn’t get the room warm until mid afternoon. Her memories were plentiful; both painful and beautiful.

Her mother and father were very hard working farmers and they were never going hungry, in fact, they fed a few of the townspeople who would visit their place, but they always lived hand to mouth.

From this background, Anna grew to be an independent and strong willed woman who picked cotton, worked in a store for as little as $1 a day and finally working up to $25 a week, all to raise her two boys totally on her own. She divorced Everett Fuller after eight years of marriage and wouldn’t take a nickel from him or anyone else.

Sometime later Anna went to work at NAD McAlester where she met Dwayne Howell whom she later married. In 1947 the family moved to Hawthorne when Dwayne got on at the base.

Upon arrival here, she immediately wanted to go back “home” but she stayed long enough to get “sand in her shoes” and here she remained.

Anna is survived by her two sons: Harold and Jerry, her daughter-in-law Laura, four grandchildren, ten great grandchildren and 17 great grandchildren.