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Anna Waynette <I>Smith</I> Vandergriff

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Anna Waynette Smith Vandergriff

Birth
Arlington, Tarrant County, Texas, USA
Death
4 Jul 2009 (aged 82)
Arlington, Tarrant County, Texas, USA
Burial
Arlington, Tarrant County, Texas, USA Add to Map
Plot
Garden of the Good Shepherd, Lot 95
Memorial ID
View Source
Anna Waynette Vandergriff, 82, passed away Saturday, July 4, 2009, at an Arlington hospital suddenly after a brief battle with leukemia.
Memorial service: 2 p.m. Thursday at First United Methodist Church in Arlington. Private family burial: Moore Memorial Gardens.
Memorials: Anna Waynette would be pleased that her memory be honored with a gift to one of the following worthy organizations: the UTA School of Music; Dance Theater of Arlington; Metropolitan Classical Ballet; or Theatre Arlington. Anna Waynette Smith was born in Arlington on June 12, 1927, at the home of her parents, Gladys Parker Smith and Thomas Wayne Smith. She still owned and used the bed she was born on at the time of her death. Dr. E.C. Hancock delivered her into this world. She was a child of the Depression, but her family never let her fully understand how hard the times were. This gave her the ability to find hope and determination to overcome obstacles all her life. When she was young, her father lost his job as a construction supervisor for Tarrant County. She was a daddy's girl. Anna Waynette was delighted that her father now had more time to stay home and play with her. Her parents provided her with an atmosphere of endless learning opportunities. They shared their total lives with her and treated her as though she was special. During her childhood there were approximately 2,000 residents of Arlington. The roads were dirt, the summers warm and the winters cold. Anna Waynette was a city girl and an only child. Her mother was the baby in a family of 13. All her relatives lived on farms in the country. Long drives from the city to the farms of various relatives were commonplace. These farms were located near what are now Park Row and SH 360, SH 360 and Pioneer Parkway, the Arlington/Mansfield city limits on Cooper Street, and on Arbrook near Martin High School. She tended to an orchard and a garden at her home and worked at family farms and a dairy when needed.
Church and school were the center of her young life. She learned to play both the flute and the piano. Anna Waynette was the only student in the mid- to late 1930s who played the piano. She moved from the North to the South Side School to play in the band and for the choir. As she entered Arlington High School, Anna Waynette directed the choir in interscholastic league competitions. She also became the organist at First Methodist Church and other local churches. After graduating from Arlington High School in 1944, Anna Waynette attended and graduated in 1946 from North Texas Agricultural College, a two-year junior college based in Arlington. NTAC gave way in the 1950s to Arlington State College and to the University of Texas at Arlington in the 1960s. As a student during the war years of World War II, she remembered the large military detachments attending classes there, which made for "lots of sock hops."
Following graduation from NTAC, Anna Waynette continued her music studies at TCU on scholarship for flute and piano. She became a secretary for Col. Irons, the chairman of the Fine Arts Department at NTAC. She was also employed by the department as a piano instructor and accompanist. Her loyalty to UTA always remained strong. NTAC, now UTA was one of the highlights of her life. The school gave her the opportunity to perform as a musician and mature as a person. She chaired the annual National Alumni Association Fund Drive in 1984.
Mrs. Vandergriff maintained her interest in the arts for all her life. She helped to organize Arlington's first Community Concert series and served on the board of Dance Theatre of Arlington. She opened her homes over the years for numerous fund-raising events to benefit cultural and charitable activities. Anna Waynette served on the advisory board of the Arlington Junior League, the Women's Shelter, the Jaycee wives and the Arlington Newcomers Club. She chaired Arlington's first Mothers' March on Polio for the March of Dimes. Among her awards were a life membership in the Arlington Council of Parents and Teachers and the Rotary Clubs Paul Harris Foundation Award.
While growing up in Arlington, she met her future husband, Tommie Vandergriff, when he moved to Arlington with his family from Carrollton. Anna Waynette was 11 years old at their first meeting. Indifferent to each other for several years thereafter, their relationship reached a turning point in the fall of 1942 when Tommie watched Anna Waynette sing "Moonlight Becomes You" in a school assembly at Arlington High School. Tom was smitten. He sent her dozens of red roses that night and for many days thereafter.
Anna Waynette and Tom were married March 19, 1949, at First Methodist Church. At the outset of their marriage, Tom became the president of the Chamber of Commerce. Tom was elected mayor of Arlington in the spring of 1951 and served in that office until the spring of 1977. Anna Waynette was well aware of the "romance" Tom Vandergriff had going with the city of Arlington for all those years. This romance assumed new and larger boundaries to include the people of the region as he served in the United States Congress and as county judge of Tarrant County. Tom and Anna Waynette's public service career started in 1949 and continued until Tom's retirement in 2007.
For 58 of their 60 years of married life, public service was as much a part of their lives and breathing, eating and being. She once noted that Dr. Joyce Brothers said that "increased participation in community affairs is a great help in revitalizing a marriage." Anna Waynette and Tom were in a constant state of revitalization. Anna Waynette did not shrink from the task of playing second fiddle to her husband's romance with Arlington. She embraced it. Anna Waynette once wrote that "Ladies like me have been relegated to the footnotes for the most part in history. Their names are all preceded by two words, wife of...I always felt that would make an appropriate epitaph for me 'Wife of Tom Vandergriff.'"
Anna Waynette considered her greatest challenge and accomplishment to be the raising of her four children, Vanessa, Victor, Valerie and Viveca. She did not live her life through them but she did live her life as a mother with the purpose of fostering academic learning, instilling a passion for the arts, teaching them how to be a functioning and product member of the human race and helping them develop the maturity to make their own way in the world. Anna Waynette considered her greatest pure joy to be the time that she spent with her grandchildren. She had all the fun and none of the responsibility she had as a parent. She took great pride in watching them grow up, mature and pursue their dreams.
Anna Waynette considered her greatest source of strength and comfort to be her many friends. She enjoyed a lifetime of laughs and fun with each and every one of you. The good times and steadfast friendship helped her cope with life's ups and downs. You were never more present in her heart and mind than during the hours of her greatest need at the end of her life.
Anna Waynette would want to thank all of the many doctors, nurses and staff at Arlington Memorial Hospital who worked tirelessly to support and care for her in her final illness. You helped her and her family cope with her sudden passing in a humane and loving way.
She was preceded in death by her parents; her beloved grandmother, "Mammie"; her precious infant son, Vaughn William; and the many wonderful members of her extended Parker clan. We are confident that she is now in their loving company and overjoyed to see them all again.
Survivors: Husband of 60 years, Judge Tom Vandergriff; daughter, Vanessa Watters and husband, Mark; son, Victor Vandergriff and wife, Kristin; daughter, Valerie Kelton and husband, Paul; daughter, Viveca Vandergriff.
Published in Star-Telegram on 7/8/2009
Anna Waynette Vandergriff, 82, passed away Saturday, July 4, 2009, at an Arlington hospital suddenly after a brief battle with leukemia.
Memorial service: 2 p.m. Thursday at First United Methodist Church in Arlington. Private family burial: Moore Memorial Gardens.
Memorials: Anna Waynette would be pleased that her memory be honored with a gift to one of the following worthy organizations: the UTA School of Music; Dance Theater of Arlington; Metropolitan Classical Ballet; or Theatre Arlington. Anna Waynette Smith was born in Arlington on June 12, 1927, at the home of her parents, Gladys Parker Smith and Thomas Wayne Smith. She still owned and used the bed she was born on at the time of her death. Dr. E.C. Hancock delivered her into this world. She was a child of the Depression, but her family never let her fully understand how hard the times were. This gave her the ability to find hope and determination to overcome obstacles all her life. When she was young, her father lost his job as a construction supervisor for Tarrant County. She was a daddy's girl. Anna Waynette was delighted that her father now had more time to stay home and play with her. Her parents provided her with an atmosphere of endless learning opportunities. They shared their total lives with her and treated her as though she was special. During her childhood there were approximately 2,000 residents of Arlington. The roads were dirt, the summers warm and the winters cold. Anna Waynette was a city girl and an only child. Her mother was the baby in a family of 13. All her relatives lived on farms in the country. Long drives from the city to the farms of various relatives were commonplace. These farms were located near what are now Park Row and SH 360, SH 360 and Pioneer Parkway, the Arlington/Mansfield city limits on Cooper Street, and on Arbrook near Martin High School. She tended to an orchard and a garden at her home and worked at family farms and a dairy when needed.
Church and school were the center of her young life. She learned to play both the flute and the piano. Anna Waynette was the only student in the mid- to late 1930s who played the piano. She moved from the North to the South Side School to play in the band and for the choir. As she entered Arlington High School, Anna Waynette directed the choir in interscholastic league competitions. She also became the organist at First Methodist Church and other local churches. After graduating from Arlington High School in 1944, Anna Waynette attended and graduated in 1946 from North Texas Agricultural College, a two-year junior college based in Arlington. NTAC gave way in the 1950s to Arlington State College and to the University of Texas at Arlington in the 1960s. As a student during the war years of World War II, she remembered the large military detachments attending classes there, which made for "lots of sock hops."
Following graduation from NTAC, Anna Waynette continued her music studies at TCU on scholarship for flute and piano. She became a secretary for Col. Irons, the chairman of the Fine Arts Department at NTAC. She was also employed by the department as a piano instructor and accompanist. Her loyalty to UTA always remained strong. NTAC, now UTA was one of the highlights of her life. The school gave her the opportunity to perform as a musician and mature as a person. She chaired the annual National Alumni Association Fund Drive in 1984.
Mrs. Vandergriff maintained her interest in the arts for all her life. She helped to organize Arlington's first Community Concert series and served on the board of Dance Theatre of Arlington. She opened her homes over the years for numerous fund-raising events to benefit cultural and charitable activities. Anna Waynette served on the advisory board of the Arlington Junior League, the Women's Shelter, the Jaycee wives and the Arlington Newcomers Club. She chaired Arlington's first Mothers' March on Polio for the March of Dimes. Among her awards were a life membership in the Arlington Council of Parents and Teachers and the Rotary Clubs Paul Harris Foundation Award.
While growing up in Arlington, she met her future husband, Tommie Vandergriff, when he moved to Arlington with his family from Carrollton. Anna Waynette was 11 years old at their first meeting. Indifferent to each other for several years thereafter, their relationship reached a turning point in the fall of 1942 when Tommie watched Anna Waynette sing "Moonlight Becomes You" in a school assembly at Arlington High School. Tom was smitten. He sent her dozens of red roses that night and for many days thereafter.
Anna Waynette and Tom were married March 19, 1949, at First Methodist Church. At the outset of their marriage, Tom became the president of the Chamber of Commerce. Tom was elected mayor of Arlington in the spring of 1951 and served in that office until the spring of 1977. Anna Waynette was well aware of the "romance" Tom Vandergriff had going with the city of Arlington for all those years. This romance assumed new and larger boundaries to include the people of the region as he served in the United States Congress and as county judge of Tarrant County. Tom and Anna Waynette's public service career started in 1949 and continued until Tom's retirement in 2007.
For 58 of their 60 years of married life, public service was as much a part of their lives and breathing, eating and being. She once noted that Dr. Joyce Brothers said that "increased participation in community affairs is a great help in revitalizing a marriage." Anna Waynette and Tom were in a constant state of revitalization. Anna Waynette did not shrink from the task of playing second fiddle to her husband's romance with Arlington. She embraced it. Anna Waynette once wrote that "Ladies like me have been relegated to the footnotes for the most part in history. Their names are all preceded by two words, wife of...I always felt that would make an appropriate epitaph for me 'Wife of Tom Vandergriff.'"
Anna Waynette considered her greatest challenge and accomplishment to be the raising of her four children, Vanessa, Victor, Valerie and Viveca. She did not live her life through them but she did live her life as a mother with the purpose of fostering academic learning, instilling a passion for the arts, teaching them how to be a functioning and product member of the human race and helping them develop the maturity to make their own way in the world. Anna Waynette considered her greatest pure joy to be the time that she spent with her grandchildren. She had all the fun and none of the responsibility she had as a parent. She took great pride in watching them grow up, mature and pursue their dreams.
Anna Waynette considered her greatest source of strength and comfort to be her many friends. She enjoyed a lifetime of laughs and fun with each and every one of you. The good times and steadfast friendship helped her cope with life's ups and downs. You were never more present in her heart and mind than during the hours of her greatest need at the end of her life.
Anna Waynette would want to thank all of the many doctors, nurses and staff at Arlington Memorial Hospital who worked tirelessly to support and care for her in her final illness. You helped her and her family cope with her sudden passing in a humane and loving way.
She was preceded in death by her parents; her beloved grandmother, "Mammie"; her precious infant son, Vaughn William; and the many wonderful members of her extended Parker clan. We are confident that she is now in their loving company and overjoyed to see them all again.
Survivors: Husband of 60 years, Judge Tom Vandergriff; daughter, Vanessa Watters and husband, Mark; son, Victor Vandergriff and wife, Kristin; daughter, Valerie Kelton and husband, Paul; daughter, Viveca Vandergriff.
Published in Star-Telegram on 7/8/2009


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  • Created by: Tim
  • Added: Jul 8, 2009
  • Find a Grave Memorial ID:
  • Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/39219063/anna_waynette-vandergriff: accessed ), memorial page for Anna Waynette Smith Vandergriff (12 Jun 1927–4 Jul 2009), Find a Grave Memorial ID 39219063, citing Moore Memorial Gardens Cemetery, Arlington, Tarrant County, Texas, USA; Maintained by Tim (contributor 46844902).