Our Mother was  born Ollie Mae Matthews, on May 3rd, 1901, to  John Tyler Matthews and Amanda Johnson Matthews in Howell, County, Missouri (according to Fred near a town called West Plains). At a very young age she  and her family moved to  Arkansas, but then went back to  Mo..  Her father was struck down with either polio or a stroke and was paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of this life.  The family moved back to Arkansas and on Aug. 8th 1919 Mother married our father, William Lewis Bowers.  He was in his mid thirties and had five boys from his first wife who died in the great  flu epidemic of 1918 along with a baby boy, who is buried in the same coffin with her.  The boys were, Walter Lewis Bowers, Roy Andrew Bowers, Carl Johnny Bowers, Robert Eugene Bowers  (Robert died a few years later with a heart attack) and William Dial (Rooster) Bowers, so  Mamma raised our half- brothers and the five of us, Fred Thomas Bowers, Harry Jackson Bowers, Edith Mae Bowers  Krumholz, Lee Neil Bowers Kever (Me) and Glenn Edward Bowers. She did all this when times were hard, No electricity, heated and cooked with wood stoves, and did the wash in a big old black wash pot and wash board.  Our father was nearly burnt to death when I was about twelve years old and Mamma took care of him until he died in 1956.  She still had one child at home, our brother Glenn Edward, and times really got hard then. Mamma worked as a cleaning woman and as a dish washer to put food on the table for her and Glenn Edward.  I didn't know things were so bad until I came home to stay with her for awhile. Not too long after that she and Glenn moved to Peck, Kansas to live with our Brother Harry.  After Glenn finished High school, he went  into the Navy and Mamma moved to California and took care of her brother until he died.  She then moved back to Arkansas and took care of one of her sisters until she died. From that point on she lived in a mobile home next to me and we sort of took care of each other until she had to go into a nursing home for the last three years of her life.

Mamma was a hard worker and there was not a lazy bone in her body.  She raised a big garden every year, had her own laying hens, did the wash in the big black pot and did all this while raising nine children.  Daddy wasn't much on doing home repairs, so Mamma would do them, along  with hanging wallpaper and laying new floors, etc..

She loved all of us very, very much and liked to have worried herself to death over us.  She saved every letter, gift, card and scrap of paper from us and her friends.

She had her faults like everyone else, but if she liked you, she would give you anything she had.

She out lived all her brothers, sisters and all but one stepson. Her mind was good up until about three months before she passed away.  She started having mini-strokes and passed away on February 4, 1997.  She was almost 96 years old.  I miss her every day and go visit her and daddy at the cemetery a lot.

There really aren't any words to express how much we love and miss her.  She was a Great, Great Lady.

Below are some  poems she wrote, that I didn't know anything about until I found them after she passed away.

LEE NEIL BOWERS KEVER, DAUGHTER OF OLLIE MAE BOWERS