ForeverMissed
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Her Life

The Final Years In Town

December 28, 2014

Though Sterling & Anita hated to sell the farm, they knew they had to.  So, in the summer of 2006, they moved to Hikes Point closer to doctors and the various conveniences they needed.  Though on a busy corner, Anita sometimes called the old house her "dream house".






She cultivated neighbors and worked her magic on her flowers.  She turned an unattractive corner lot into her own colorful haven - gardening "therapy" as she called it.


The year before, in 2005, Howie & Linda quit their corporate jobs, sold their house and belongings, and bought an RV to live in while traveling North America.  Anita was fully supportive and learned to use a computer at age 73 to keep up with their travels.



      

In the next few years, Sterling & Anita traveled to visit Howie & Linda, and to particpate in the various RV functions they put on.



  





They really looked forward to meeting all the RV friends of Howie & Linda and they embraced the community whenever they could.

Back in Hikes Point, Anita grew her flowers and Sterling grew his garden in the back yard.  They made new friends that became "family" and Anita started attending a senior exercise class called "Forever Young Fitness" at a church down the street.  She loved going twice a week and she met incredible new friends.


   


   


Besides her flowers, that was the one thing she really loved that she did for herself.

She was really doing well, and she got to spend a lot of time with her friend, Bob Hill, a former Courier Journal columnist.  Bob wrote an article about her life called "Anita Payne - At Home On Floyds Fork". 

For one of the few times in her life, she felt special and she was really happy.





 


Unfortunately, in 2013, she was diagnosed with lung cancer.  Her years of smoking, her weak lungs, and her age made the diagnosis dire.  She refused chemotherapy and reluctantly accepted radiation treatment.  The treatment took a lot out of her, and she vowed that she would do no more testing or treatment of any kind in the future.

The radiation seemed to work and the family relaxed, although she became weak and could no longer do her gardening.  That was devastating to her.  In 2014, she took two bad falls and her health seemed to be failing.  Upon admittance to the hospital for a severe cold or pneumonia, it was discovered that the cancer had returned and spread.

Since she wouldn't allow treatment, her condition deteriorated rapidly and after a six-week stay in the hospital, she passed peacefully in the care of Hospice.

She will be forever missed.


               

            

Back "Home" To The Farm

December 28, 2014

Wanting to be near family and having concerns about raising a child in California, Sterling & Anita moved back east again in 1965.  This time, they bought a restaurant in Hardinsburg, Indiana that they named "Howie's Dinner Bell".

However, the restaurant turned out to be far too much work with far too little payoff.  So, they sold out and headed back to California where jobs were plentiful and the pay was high.  Once they built up some cash, they were on the move again.

In June 1967, the little family left California for good.  They bought a small, 10-acre farm outside of Louisville in southeastern Jefferson County where they would live for the next 39 years.



       


Sterling, a plumber by trade, eventually started his own one-man plumbing company, Sterling Plumbing Service.  Anita served as receptionist, secretary, scheduler, and bookkeeper while raising Howie.




 
With Sterling's long work hours, she was pretty much on her own during the week.

In addition to her duties for the business, she cooked and gardened ....





and helped take care of the many farm animals which existed for both food and pleasure.



 

As Howie got older, she chauffered him to sports practices and games, AND she took on the role of babysitter for various family members.  She babysat Linda's children, her grandchildren Matthew & Heather, and she struggled to repair that long-damaged relationship.





She juggled numerous responsibilites, and always seemed to put her needs last.

Howie graduated high school in 1981 and went off to college with his new love, Linda.  That was a tough time for her as she continued to run the administrative part of the plumbing business until Sterling retired in 1984.

Taking care of kids was one of the things that gave her joy in those years.




   

After Sterling & Anita's retirement, Howie & Linda graduated from Western Kentucky and got married in 1986.






Sterling and Anita worked the farm and lived there another twenty years until 2006 when the work got to be too much and their health started to decline.  After all their early years of moving around back and forth across the country, they lived at the farm for 39 years and it became a part of them.       

Addition To The Family

December 28, 2014

In the early 1960s, Anita helped out a dear friend by taking care of her baby girl while the friend was seriously ill.  It nearly broke Anita's heart to return the little girl when her mother's health improved.  That, coupled with the pain from leaving her own daughter behind, provided the impetus for Sterling & Anita to adopt a baby.

Sterling was 41 and Anita was 31 when Sterling Howard "Howie" was born on July 29, 1963.  They took him home when he was only three days old, and that changed their lives forever.


  


She dedicated the next eighteen years of her life (and beyond) to her "baby boy", Howie.  

Searching For Something

December 28, 2014

In the early 1950s, Anita met Sterling Payne.



They were both struggling with marriages, and they did something unheard of at that time.

They left their marriages and set off together for Texas.  Sterling left two sons behind, and Anita left her daughter Linda in Louisville to be cared for by Linda's father, Buck.  Leaving Linda would be a decision that she regretted the rest of her life.

Sterling & Anita lived in San Antonio, Texas and then Los Angeles, California for the next few years.  They worked and traveled and kept in touch with their children.  They worked hard and purchased a luxury trailer to live in.



      
Eventually, the pair left southern California and moved back east where they bought a farm in southern Indiana near the town of Marengo.  They lived in a small trailer on the farm for awhile.






While living on the farm, after divorces to their prior spouses were finalized, Sterling & Anita got married at the courthouse in Jeffersonville, Indiana in March 1959.


   


They sold half of the farm for the price they paid for the entire tract, but then later sold the remainder of the Indiana farm and headed back to California where they purchased a house. 

 
     

They traveled up and down California, and they enjoyed hosting family from back home that came to visit.  They worked hard while developing friendships, and it was one of those friendships that led to the next chapter in their lives.


    

Married Young

December 28, 2014

In December 1949, at age 17, Anita married Buck Risinger and they lived in a house on Brush Run Road very close to her family's home on Floyds Fork.

In April, 1951, she and Buck had a daughter, Linda.


   

Unfortunately, the marriage only lasted about two and half years, and then Anita married her second husband, Jack Fischer.  That one didn't last very long either. 

The Early Years

December 28, 2014

Anita was born June 11, 1932, in a little house off of Fairmount Road in Jefferson County, southeast of Louisville, Kentucky.  She was the daughter of John Hollis Brown and Irene Shake Brown, and she had twelve brothers and sisters.

At age two, the family moved to the home of her widowed grandmother, where she had great memories of being taught about the forest and fields around the house.  It was there her grandmother showed her how and where to plant the vegetables they grew.  She lived there until she was six and a half.

For the next several years, her family moved from farm to farm in Meade, Oldham, and Jefferson counties in Kentucky, and there was also a home in southern Indiana.

Eventually, in the late 1940s, the family settled next to Floyds Fork on the property that was once Seatonville Springs Country Club (later known as Irongate Country Club).  They lived there for a couple of years, and she remembered that valley along the fork quite fondly. 

Here she is at age 13 in January, 1946. 
  



And here she is just before her 16th birthday in 1948.