Born in rural eastern central Oklahoma to tenant farmers, Mervin and Leota Bowen, Willene was the fifth of nine children. While as a girl she wasn’t the best helper in the cotton fields (her dad said she picked too many green bolls to add weight to her sack), she was a big help to her mom in the house.
On March 7, 1943 she married Darwin “Woody” Woodfield, and began taking care of her own house and growing family. Willene was a good wife and mother, and she was the stabilizing force of the family doing whatever was necessary to properly raise six children, which sometimes meant working outside of the home to supplement the family income. Whether she was slinging hash at a restaurant, taking on early morning paper routes, running a beauty shop, working a factory assembly line, taking in laundry and ironing, working in convenience stores, or bookkeeping, she did whatever she had to do to make sure that her children never had to do without the things they truly needed. She put in many hours working to make ends meet, but her house was always clean, and good meals were always prepared.
Willene lived for her family and was happiest when she was cooking for any of them who could make it home for any occasion. She made many sacrifices in her life for her family, and rarely complained. She was a strong woman with strong principles, and she dedicated her life to those she loved. She believed in realistic family values learned from years of doing whatever was necessary to give her children the tools and the fortitude they needed to become independent, tolerant, respectful, and successful.
Like other good moms, she defended her children when appropriate, and punished them when necessary. She never copped out by using the line, “just wait until your father gets home.” If punishment was due, she didn’t believe in waiting, she doled it out herself. When praise was due, she provided it, but not to such excess that it swelled heads. Most of her children didn’t even know until they were much older the number of times she went to bat for them at school or behind the scenes. She didn’t want them to become smug or have inflated feelings of self-importance thinking that Mom would always go running to their defense no matter what they did. She wanted their accomplishments to be their own, and for them to have to face and correct their own mistakes.
She patched up her kids and kept them going whether they had been dragged down a gravel road after riding on the hood of a car, or had their front teeth knocked out by a clothes line while running through the neighborhood after dark. She tended their cuts and bruises after trips to the emergency room following efforts to “fix” their bicycles, or mishaps under the wheels of a tractor, and she nursed them through countless viruses brought home from school. She taught them to protect themselves from bullies, and to stand up for each other and for those who could not stand up for themselves.
Willene was a multi-tasker before the term became popular. She did the laundry, cooked the meals, cleaned the house, held down jobs outside the home, sewed new clothes and patched old ones, made costumes for school pageants and plays, shopped for groceries, and even made a pretty good stock car driver when the brakes went out on that old Chevy in downtown Vicksburg. In houses that rarely had more than 1000 square feet of living area with only one bathroom, she was also an accomplished mediator.
It was later in life, after retirement, that Willene discovered what would become one of her favorite pastimes. Back in 1990 when she was still recovering from triple bypass heart surgery, her sister, Irene, convinced her to go to a few garage sales. As Willene later put it, she wasn’t sure whether the outing was designed to cure her or kill her, but when she survived that first unique shopping adventure, she became a regular garage sale junkie. Here was a woman who generally knew the way to the grocery store, the beauty shop, the shopping center, and K-Mart who was now mapping out garage sale excursions into neighborhoods she previously didn’t even know existed. She and her sister Irene and her sister-in-law Cherry referred to themselves as the bottoms-up brigade since they could be found at any garage sale bent over a cardboard box of junk on the floor.
Willene traveled the rocky roads of life with tenacity, and often made them appear as smooth as a fine asphalt highway, but time ultimately took its toll on her. For almost nine months between 1999 and 2000 she cared for her husband of 57 years who had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. After he passed away on July 17, 2000, Willene began to have setbacks of her own both mental and physical.
She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2002 and began to lose her ability to speak. The frustration of trying to get a point across was probably harder on her than any physical ailment that she later faced. She endured compression fractures of her spine from osteoporosis, a broken arm and hip, bedsores and infections, and lost what quality of life that no good person such as she should ever be forced to lose. Yet, for a long time during this period she managed to keep her sense of humor, and to the end she was always able to show a glint of recognition and delight for her family.
The best way to sum up the life of this remarkable woman would be to simply say that she was a good daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, and a dear friend. That all adds up to a great person. Such a great person did not deserve the suffering she endured near the end, but had she been able to speak the last few months, she probably would have apologized for being a burden. That’s just the way she was.
She is in a far better place today, and, you can count on it, the angels have a true mentor in their midst. Willene was preceded in death by her parents; her brother, Dhon Bowen; her brother-in-law, Willie Cannon; and her husband, Woody Woodfield. She is survived by her three sisters and four brothers, Iva Dale Cannon and her husband Cecil, Irene Cole, Nita Cannon, Jack Bowen and his wife Cherry, Murl Bowen and his wife Rita, Terry Bowen and his wife Elaine, and Butch Bowen; six children, Shirley Cornelison and her husband Willie, Ronnie Woodfield and his wife Betty, Dale Woodfield and his wife Kathy, Jackie Woodfield, Jimmy Woodfield, and Terry Woodfield and his wife Elizabeth; ten grandchildren, sixteen great grandchildren; and a multitude of nieces and nephews.
Funeral service will be 10:00 a.m. Thursday, May 11, 2006 at Broussard’s, 2000 McFaddin, Beaumont. A graveside service will be 3:00 p.m. Friday, May 12, 2006 at Calera Cemetery in Durant, Oklahoma. A gathering of family and friends will be from 6:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. Wednesday, May 10, 2006 at the Mortuary.
