Mary Alice Newell Davenport was soft-spoken and beautiful, kind and generous and I sincerely believe everyone who ever met her thought she was a wonderful person.

Growing up the oldest of seven children (and the oldest girl), she helped her mother Sarah with the other "kids" in the family. She also worked in the field and spent a great deal of time with her grandparents, Hugh Ferguson and Mary Margaret Matheson Newell. There she cooked and cleaned house for Grandma and did odd jobs for Grandpa. They would give her a few cents for helping out. She became a woman of "means." I believe this is what led her to her love of shopping, especially for clothes and shoes!

Mary Alice graduated from Prairie Valley High School and moved to Shawnee working for a lumber company and others until she was employed by Mr. and Mrs. Grady's to babysit their daughter, Rhoda Jean. They opened up another world for her. Mr. Grady owned a car dealership in Shawnee and loved to fish, especially for trout. They took Mary Alice on a trip to New Mexico, the Pecos River near Santa Fe where they rented a cabin and Mr. Grady could fish out the back door.

She would spend hours telling me of everything she saw on that trip. Mr. Grady bought her a turquoise ring from the pueblo Indians sitting under the portal at the Palace of the Governors. He also bought her a Coke to drink at the La Fonda Hotel on the square. That Coke cost a whole dollar! I think this is part of the reason why I love Santa Fe so much.

After the war was over, Mary Alice married Doyle Davenport in 1946 and they moved from Shawnee to Oklahoma City where she worked for the Telephone Company and he was a butcher in a meat market. They had one daughter, Renée, in 1952. Doyle eventually got a job for the U.S. Postal Service working as a mail clerk in the main post office in downtown Oklahoma City and Mary Alice left the Telephone Company to become a full-time mother and elementary school volunteer.

Mary Alice was also a good cook. She could not bake bread like her mother, but she did bake a mean cinnamon roll and raisin pie, could cut up and fry great chicken and bake a delicious meatloaf. However, her crowning glory was her candy: Aunt Bill's and Overseas Fudge. Every Christmas from the time I was just a toddler, Mary Alice and her sister Nona, would make candy. There's a photo of me at age 3 1/2 standing on the kitchen stool with an apron around my waist and a spoon in my hand stirring the Pet milk as it warmed in the pan. When Nona became ill and had to move to a nursing home, it became my job to step into Nona's place. We followed tradition and made candy up to last year when Mary Alice was in the hospital over Christmas.

Mary Alice did not have any hobbies, but she was a wonderful seamstress and made most of her clothes and my clothes when I was in school. The closest she ever came to a hobby was traveling. After Doyle passed away in 1971 and I had enrolled in the University of Oklahoma, her aunt and uncle, Cecil (Newell) and Charles Archerd invited her to go with them on a bus tour of New England. She did and she loved it! She spent many happy years seeing the USA and Canada by bus, making new friends and visiting many wonderful places.

In 2003 Mary Alice sold her house in Oklahoma City and moved to the Rivermont Retirement Community in Norman to be near her daughter and son-in-law. There she made more new friends and went on even more adventures.

Mary Alice and Nona were the closest of sisters. Mary Alice passed away on January 23, just 8 days after we lost Nona. I miss them both terribly.

-Renée Davenport Mixon