Remembering Tomasine Leigh Rainey Anson

I Thought We’d Visit When We Were Old

                   I don’t remember not knowing Tomasine Leigh Rainey Anson. She was three years older than me so as long as I can remember she was my cousin. Actually, her dad, Leo Lewis Rainey and my mother, Bernyce Smith Gates were first cousins. Growing up in the same community, riding the same bus, and attending the same school caused us to be not only cousins, but also friends.

                  My dad, Edmund Gates, Jr. liked to tell “Tom” about the first time he saw her. Her parents, Leo and Velma Bowen Rainey, had chosen her and adopted her changing her name from Darlene to Tomasine. She was around two years old when they brought her by to meet her new extended family. It was raining that day, and Dad told her the first word he heard her speak was “Wain.”

                 Her paternal grandparents, Lewis and Pearl Bierman Rainey, immediately embraced her as their darling granddaughter according to my mother’s account. Leo and Velma’s only son had died earlier of leukemia. Tomasine would be their only grandchild, and the two of them doted on her, loving her with every fiber of their being.

When I showed Aunt Emma Rainey Buckley this
             photo of Tom, she exclaimed, "She looks like a
glamour girl!"

Tom had every reason to be spoiled, irresponsible, and bratty, but she was just the opposite. She faced every challenge – she never got on a tractor that she could not maneuver with ease. In her early teen years, she could plow an entire field and till it just as well as a seasoned farmer would. Tomasine was an excellent student. She won many honors of which one was the Indian Electric Cooperative annual essay contest, being awarded an expense-paid trip to Washington, D. C. We were all so proud of her. 

This photograph of Tom from her junior year in
           high school accompanied two articles about her
             IEC essay contest win that my grandma had placed
in her scrap book.

Tomasine and I took music lessons from Mildred Wedell. Tom mastered the accordion while I took piano lessons. Tomasine performed flawlessly on her accordion at the spring recital. Her musical talent and enjoyment of playing the accordion shone throughout her performance.
                Many summers in the mid-1960s found us attending Vacation Bible School at what was then the Ralston Federated Church. (The Ralston Federated Church is now the Ralston Bible Church.) Ruth Ann Hightower provided a ride each day for me. What a fun time I had with her three children! Tom lived across the road south of the Goad family so she rode each afternoon to the VBS sessions with Ann Goad and her four kids. We learned so many strong biblical truths during each week of VBS.

                 One of the funniest stories of Tom and her dad centered around Tomasine’s junior prom. Leo, never one to observe rules, insisted on attending the Ralston High School prom literally behind the scenery. Parents participating in the junior/senior prom never occurred in the early 1970s. Even though he skewed some decorations, Leo, who had been ornery in high school, tried inconspicuously to be sure everything was above board. No other parents attended the prom except those who were teachers or school board members. It didn’t seem to bother Tom. She knew he loved her intensely and just had to see for himself that nothing negative was going on.
                As we became adults, our lives grew busier and busier with little time to visit. Every time we’d see each other at school functions – I taught her grandchildren, Ethan and Kelsey - or run into each other at Wal-Mart, we would hug, catch up a little bit, and part with her saying, “Come and see me.” I always responded, “I sure will.”

One of our last conversations was after the Spring Music concert when Kelsey Anson, her granddaughter, was in my third grade classroom. In accordance with a pioneer -type theme, Kelsey wore a nifty, creatively made bonnet that could be turned and worn as an apron. Of course, Tom had sewed it for her. She promised me the pattern.  Then she launched into her memories of my grandma, Gladys Vivian Rainey Smith. She exclaimed, “Bernadean, do you remember the little nightgowns that your grandma made for Dawn (Leann Rice Haney), you, and me? That took so much work. She took all that time to sew those for us.”

I always thought we would be much like our grandmothers who visited each other regularly, laughing and retelling stories. I can still hear Aunt Pearl’s distinctive, high-pitched laugh as her eyes wrinkled closed and visualize my grandmother, Gladys Smith, glancing sideways at her sister-in-law with that mischievous twinkle in her eye as they visited. That was not to be since Tomasine died suddenly on July 31, 2011, at her home in the west Big Bend. She was only fifty-eight years of age.

How important it is to spend time with those we love, telling them how grateful we are for them and as Dad would say, “Give them the roses while they live.” Time speeds by so fast. Unless we make time for the important,  the necessary will monopolize every waking minute, and someday we will turn around and ask, “Where did all the time go?” or worse yet, “I wish I had …”

On Tomasine's birthdate, February 23, in her memory, as family and friends, let’s purpose to never let the mundane routine of the day crowd out the once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to genuinely love those we hold so dear and let them know.