Aunt Becky Lanning Nabell

She worked willingly with her hands her entire life. She cut the face masks for the dead. She kept on hand, flowers fashioned out of colored crepe paper, to decorate a grave in wintertime. In the summer she gathered spruce and pine boughs and seasonal flowers to preserve for later times when they would be needed.

She learned to midwife and future generations lived because of her knowledge. She gave shoes, high top with buttons, to a child, now grown old, who has never forgotten. Company was served and strangers made welcome from her collection of beautiful cut glass and china housed in a tall glassed mahogany cabinet. Company was anyone who dropped in near mealtime – be it a child or adult, rich or poor. To these differences she was blind. The door to her home was always open.

She married a man from a wealthy family who was not of her faith and a new word was introduced to the children, infidel. She prayed for them both – strength and wisdom for herself – salvation for him. She lost a child that brought about rebirth in him. She called it a blessing.

She tended the sick and closed the eyes of the dying. She offered advice, "kill em with kindness" and took it herself. These are some of the things we know about her and there are many more things that we don't know.
In her twilight years, she moved away from Turniptown. She was gone only a few years until they brought her back to the mountains she loved.

She has two monuments in Turniptown, one at the church cemetery, a stone with the carved words, bought by the family. The other she planted herself, just up the road a ways; a yellow forsythia bush at the edge of what once was a yard. Today on Turniptown Road, this living monument, the yellow forsythia which blooms early each spring, reminds us where she lived.

Source: Margie Lanning Dunn, Bill Griffin
"The Lannings of Turniptown Road"