For Nema: Anne Littlewolf

 

I gave Nema LaCuyer the pastor at Mesa Vista United Methodist Church a copy of Friends Forever by Anne Littlewolf. This last Sunday she said she liked it but had a hard time getting through it. She read it at the 11:00 service to the children.

I told her that I would have to share with her about the author/illustrator of the children’s book at a later time, as it’s a long story.

Nema as all pastors has limited time for long stories so I thought I’d post about my “Twin” here on my blog and then repost it on Facebook for her.

Anne Littlewolf was not the name she was born with. She legally changed it when she became an artist. I met her at Wayland Baptist College our freshman year as Pat Penny.

Her father was the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Farmington, NM. It so happened that in 1966 for six months my family lived in Farmington and that was the church we attended. When I found out where she was from and the church, we talked about some of the people both of us knew. A friend that lived two doors down from us was now married with a child and a deacon in the church.

What we ran into was the similarity of our names. The professors couldn’t tell us apart on the seating charts. Pat Prescott and Pat Penny were just too close. We remarked on it and I’m not sure who suggested it, but we decided we must be twins. We started calling each other twin.

Pat was the type of person who never knew a stranger. I dated other girls, but she was always around and friendly. She made two other friends, Nora, and Judy. All three would go into the TV room at SUB, watch TV and knit. Someone kidded them about being old woman, and that started one of them talking in a cranky old woman voice and they decided they would start a sorority: Omicron Beta, it stood for Old Biddies.

Because Pat was always around me, she was relentless, if I wasn’t interested her that way, we were still going to be friends. That meant Nora and Judy were usually around too. Judy was the only one who had a car.

Soap Opera Time.

Judy and Nora were from Albuquerque and one spring break my parents couldn’t come get me and I asked Judy to if I could go home with her and come back. At the time Judy, a year ahead of us, was engaged to David. We had a nice ride home. On the way back. We got to know each other well.

I was, and until the invention of word processing, an absolutely abominable typist. Pat would type up my term papers. It was aggravating as we were both majoring in history and English as she would want to rephrase what I wrote, and I didn’t want to say it that way. She won as she typed it. The only thing she wanted in payment was I take her out on a date.

Judy and David broke up and this is where it got weird. Pat latched onto David and then Judy and I got together. Dave and Pat married our sophomore year and six months later had a bouncing baby girl. I remember sitting next to her while she was pregnant in History of the American Revolution in a lecture hall where the seats had a swing up desktop. She took her notes on her belly as the desktop couldn’t swing up.

Judy and I got married the end of my junior year. Judy graduated early in December and was living in an apartment. I blew out my knee the middle of the track season and lost my scholarship. We all graduated and lost contact with each other.

Reunions

Judy and I divorced, I remarried, now coming up to 45 years. Started teaching, two children and now three grandchildren. 1986: Melissa was born two weeks before my first reunion and I didn’t go. 1996: Linda and I went and met Nora. She told me about Pat and David's divorce, she remarried and was in the process of getting divorced again, there being abuse involve. 2006: Nora was there again, but technology came about. Pat had changed her name to Anne and was living in Gunnison CO. Nora gave me her e-mail address.

I got in contact with Anne, and it was like thirty years evaporated. She was living in Colorado, but she was wanting to come down to Albuquerque to see if she could get some of her artwork in Old Town or other galleries.

She drove down and stayed with her sister. She showed me her artwork from her portfolio, and I gave her a copy of Optimus: Praetorian Guard.

She also showed me her children’s book Friends Forever. Her third husband died suddenly, and this was her catharsis in grief. 

It’s a story about friendship, loss and then making new friends. Not many children's stories deal with grief. 

She wanted to know how she could get it published. I told her that "print on demand," like I used for Optimus was way too expensive.

I was teaching at the time and APS has a print shop called D’Lites. Teachers could go there get large quantities published for minimum cost, even cheaper if you brought your own paper.

I scanned copies of the pages and took them down with card stock to be printed on. All the pages were also laminated. Thirty copies came to $200.00. She gave me the money. I told her that when these were gone, I’d desktop publish them. She gave me the money to buy a binding machine. She took twenty of the copies home with her and I kept ten.

When I was having book signings for Optimus, I’d sell Friends Forever too. It was a book signing at the Tesuque flea market where a man bought two of FF's. He said he was an oncologist and thought they would be good for his waiting room.

In Gunnison Anne was working on a mural in a nursing home. She showed FF to the hospice workers, and they sent a few copies to the national branch thinking they would be good for all their nursing homes. Nothing came of it.

When all the laminated copies were gone, I started making copies on ink jet printers, but they don’t take cardstock, so I had to use regular paper bound with plastic clips.

Anne came down as she’d found a café in Old Town that would let her put up paintings on commission. She brought down paintings on wood cuts. She also had a small oil painting. She asked if I’d be her manager and keep track of what sold, and collect the money, and make sure they were still on the wall if they didn’t.

I dropped by about once a month for six months, and all was fine, nothing was selling, but they were still there. I went and the café was gone a construction crew was gutting the place and no artwork anywhere. We were unable to contact the owner. Coming Storm is the one she lost along with her wooden paintings like this one.

This is Aspens in Colorado; she gave it to me on her first trip down. I liked another of her painting in her portfolio, but she'd already sold it. She painted another and gave it to me. White Wolf.

Most of Anne’s work was in oil paintings. She sold a work to Ricky Skaggs and John Denver. Her work was on the internet from time to time with different galleries and she made a fairly good living. She did landscapes, snowscapes and eagles, lots of eagles. 

She did four eagle paintings and donated them to John Denver's foundation in Windstar, Colorado. They kept two of the paintings for display and were grateful for being able to sell the other two for the foundation. This is Eagle on a Post. It gets cold in Colorado. Not one of the ones she took to Windstar.

She was having trouble with the altitude in Gunnison, and it took some time to convince her partner she needed to move to a lower altitude. They moved down here and found a place in Tijeras where they could keep their horses.

Anne came down before they moved, Nora had moved back home, and we had both over for Thanksgiving dinner. We had a good time entertaining Linda and Melissa about all the trouble we used to get into living 40 miles from the nearest known sin.

We’d meet about every two or three months where either she would call, or I would and ask if we wanted to wake up the dead in some poor restaurant in town. We’d meet, I would take Linda and Melissa along with me and she’d keep us in stitches telling jokes for an hour. Entertained the others there if they liked it or not. But wherever we went they knew and welcomed her.

From time to time the attorney I worked with would need witnesses for a will. Nora and Anne were willing to help out. It was another way for us to keep in touch. Anne would read my stories as I was working on them and give me advice and I was always amazed at her artwork.

I asked her if she would redo Friends Forever as a coloring book. The cover and back could stay colored, but the inside a coloring book. She got it to me, and I started making copies. They didn’t sell, but I was working in an office and when clients came in to see the attorney with children, I’d give them a copy to color while they waited.

 Anne loved my mom. She stayed with Mom for a bit during the transition from moving down here, and when Mom moved from her townhouse to a senior facility, she and her partner brought their two trucks and helped her move. She sang in a church choir and on Sunday afternoons once a month they’d sing where Mom was staying. I drove Mom to church and back and Anne would drag me up with them to sing.

The last time we met she switched from oil to using colored pencil and crayon. She showed me some of her work and they were gorgeous.

I tried to get in touch with her after that, but her phone wasn’t working, and she wasn’t answering her e-mail. In November I got an email saying she was losing weight and energy. I got another email in February saying she was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. Then nothing.

I kept an eye on obits and was worried. Finally, I called her church where she was on the governing council. This was in August of 2022. The secretary said Anne died in April. No obit, no memorial service, no funeral.

What I had left of FF I gave to the nice ladies from hospice when my mother was in their care. After I heard about Anne, I took the master copies and had them printed at Office Depot on glossy paper and used wire binding. I also made more coloring books. I have copies of FF, but they are not for sale. They are free. This is my way of honoring Anne and her work.

Books on the Bosque on Coors Blvd not far from Mesa View has children's coloring night once a month. I took all the coloring books and gave them for the children to use. I can make them much easier on a laser printer if I need more.

Anne's daughter was raised by David after the divorce, but she kept in touch. Karen Sue is working at the Smithsonian Institute and kept her mother busy making different items for the children’s museum there in D.C. Anne was a great seamstress and loved helping her daughter out.

One Last Story

Pat (Anne) was in the TV room in the SUB on a Saturday around noon, all alone doing her knitting and watching a special with Engelbert Humperdinck. Three basketball players came in and changed the channel to a football game. They found out just how sharp knitting needles can be in the hands of an enraged Old Biddy.