Annie Ruth Hafele

Beginning to Final Day
Obituary - Annie R. Hafele (v2)

1. From Tennessee - back to Tennessee. Annie R. Hafele (Anne) has "been there / done that".
2. Born in a small town in middle Tennessee, in Sumner County, she, an only child, moved northward with her mother and father, who was an oil well "wildcatter" of those early days in the development of oil fields, and then gasoline production to fuel the new automobiles, even before adequate roads for them to drive on.
3. The hard work became the challenge for this young entrepreneur - to take care of his family. The discovery of new oil pools, and more work, led them from Franklin, Tennessee to Bowling Green, Kentucky and continuing on northward toward the Ohio River and to the small city of Owensboro, Kentucky, which was at that time, about the same size as Kingsport. Anne entered kindergarten and then elementary school in Owensboro. Her father, William A. Stinson, continued his challenge of helping to develop the considerable-sized oil pools, in the rolling hills and valleys near Owensboro.
4. Although the depression of the 1930s was all around us, another opportunity presented itself in the guise of a small scale gasoline manufacturing plant and the family moved to Tell City, Indiana, just 30 miles away. It was a small town of about 6,000 friendly people who worked in three furniture factories. They had a wonderful work ethic. There was also a brick plant and a tile plant in another, adjacent town.
5. Those teen years left many enjoyable memories of being able to walk all over town safely or ride on the new balloon-tired bicycles that most of us had. Time has a way of "flying", and high school activities, both in classroom and extra-curricular, prepared me for entering Purdue University in the northwestern part of Indiana, about a hundred miles from Chicago.
6. Those were exciting times - small town girl - big university. Studying for your degree was the reason you were on campus, but some extra-curricular activities helped you become well-rounded, and it worked for me too. They included singing in the University choir, shooting competition with the Woman's Rifle Team, and Phi Mu Sorority in several capacities, including Chapter President and Pan-hellenic activities. She also had the distinction of being the first woman Business Manager in the history of publishing the university yearbook, called "The Debris". World War II (WWII) had begun and the eligible men left for military service. The whole university went on a wartime schedule of training rotating groups of GIs taking special, condensed classes.
7. This scheduling meant, to Anne, to study six straight semesters, plus the freshman year to graduate from Purdue University in three years, with a B.S. degree in Food Service Management, and a new job in Detroit, Michigan for one and one half years. This was big city excitement for a small town girl. At the end of WWII, thousands of GIs were returning to finish their education and also many young brides were returning with them and they all needed to work to help ease strained budgets. This included Anne. She was married to M. F. (Bud) Hafele, who had lived in a near-by small town, Tell City, Indiana, and was half-way through college when he was called into military service (3 years). Bud had four more full semesters to complete his B.S. degree in the School of Forestry, in the College of Agriculture - he even made the Dean's list!
8. Upon graduation, his new job took us back to Tennessee, to Knoxville, working for the State Division of Forestry for three years, with headquarters there, although his work included responsibilities for eleven counties in upper east Tennessee. They enjoyed living in east Tennessee. They were both busy, he with his work and Anne with their new baby girl, Sue Ann.
9. Soon a new challenge appeared; Bud was employed by "The Mead" and immediately transferred to south Alabama, to Selma, to increase wood production for the paper mills. During that three year period in this small, sleepy southern town, he did that and they had a new son, David to add to the family. They remained a family of four on the return trips northward, as another Mead transfer was taking them to Ashland, northeastern Kentucky, for the next ten years, complete with a new home and property. Bud developed a successful new wood procurement program for the paper mill, Sue and David were enjoying new school friends and Anne taught school awhile then entered graduate school in near-by Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia, but not for long. Mead Corporation was again to move us to Kingsport, Tennessee to repeat the successful wood procurement program developed in eastern Kentucky. We moved southward to this mountainous area and enjoyed living here for forty years in their newly built home in Rotherwood Hills, west of downtown.
10. Sue and David entered high school and junior high school, Anne completed her M.S. degree in Educational Administration at East Tennessee State University, and started teaching in Kingsport School System, while Bud was off to the mountains and the valleys, because that is where the good hardwood trees grow to supply wood for "The Mead". Time flew by as each family member worked on their challenges and found much pleasure in living here in their new community. All four of them enjoyed being in Kingsport and traveling around the mountainous area. And so retirement came swiftly as the years rolled by and Anne and Bud had time for doing some world traveling. They had already driven/flown all over our beautiful USA. And they did that for twenty plus years. Still Anne kept right on pursuing her long-time hobby of native plant shade gardening on their wooded property in Rotherwood Hills. At last count the plant total was sixty plus species - including the early springtime bulbs, the summer perennials, the autumn colored mountain shrubs, plus a few winter blooming species. They both took pleasure in showing the plantings to friends and groups of plant lovers/growers during the growing seasons. Bud was her "muscle man" when the digging got tough, or a plant too big for Anne to handle, or a new planting bed to be developed - until he passed away, of multiple health problems, in January of 2005. Anne, now a widow, has resided in Asbury/Baysmont apartments, for several years. Son Colonel David has retired from a military career, and lives with his wife Barbara in Rotherwood Hills, and daughter Sue and her husband Jack continues her long-time residence in Roswell - Atlanta area working as a Landscape Designer. It must be in the genes.
11. Anne would like to share an original writing regarding her plantsmanship. "If you'd have a mind at peace, a heart that cannot harden, then stroll a winding pathway through a quiet woodland garden".