Anna Mae offered priceless smiles

Anna Mae Conkling never walked.

Anna Mae — known to many as Annie — never went to school.

She never held a job. She never married. She never raised a family.

There are a zillion things Anna Mae Conkling never did.

What she did do was smile.

And that was more than enough.

Born into humble circumstances in rural Jay County in 1924, she was physically handicapped in just about every way imaginable. Doctors did not believe she would survive to adulthood.

When she was 8 — in the midst of the Great Depression — her parents divorced. Anna Mae and her brother Fred were shuffled off to an aunt while their mother went to work cleaning the homes of folks who had fared better when the economy crashed.

But that arrangement didn’t work. 

Raising her sister’s 10-year-old boy was one thing, but Anna Mae was another thing entirely.

It wasn’t long before she was placed in an institution. That was the term they used back then, “an institution.”

A more accurate term might have been “warehouse.” 

That’s what was done with the Anna Maes of the world in those days. They were parked somewhere out of sight, often until their infirmities caught up with them and they died.

Anna Mae Conkling fared better. Fate led her back home to Jay County.

The extent of her physical limitations, however, meant that she would always require a significant amount of care.

But this time, there was no “warehouse.”

This time Anna Mae became a resident of Miller’s Merry Manor in rural Dunkirk and a client of Jay-Randolph Developmental Services.

She would live at Miller’s for 44 years before her death this month at 93.

Read that last paragraph again: 44 years.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must insert here that I’m a regular visitor at Miller’s. 

I started stopping by every week almost five years ago. That was when Virginia Conkling, Annie’s sister-in-law and the mother of my old friend Al Conkling, moved there from her home in Portland. 

I should also state for the record that I’ve come to value the friendship of a number of staff members there. 

And as long as we’re talking full disclosure, I should mention that I continue to visit weekly even after Virginia Conkling’s death in December.

I check in on longtime Knox Township trustee Gordon Kesler, say hi to Vic McEwen and try to visit with former News and Sun employee Wilma Depoy now and then.

Over the years, I’ve also had the pleasure of checking in on Anna Mae and have been the beneficiary of smiles that were worth all the gold in Fort Knox.

There was something incredibly special about walking down the hall toward the activities room and having Anna Mae spot me — her eyesight was great —  then yell, “Virginia, you’ve got a visitor!”

Anyone who ever encountered Anna Mae knows the kind of smile she offered. It was priceless. And she delivered it to virtually everyone she saw.

Recipients of those smiles know what I’m talking about.

The rest of you will have to imagine the astonishing joy and the unconditional love expressed in those moments.

Anna Mae Conkling never walked.

What she did do was smile.

And that was more than enough.