Features

As February is traditionally the month for expressions of love, Wanda Puleo’s labor of love,  a gift  to her mother, seemed to be an appropriate valentine story this week.
Meet Wanda Puleo and her extraordinary 100-year-old mother.
As the 100th birthday of Wanda Puleo’s mother, Ethel Pittman, approached, Wanda wanted to give a special, meaningful, gift to a very special, alert, mentally active and up-to-date lady.

Picture this. It is a brisk mid-winter evening in Vandalia, in the year 1861, 150 years ago.

Dave Denning was already firmly ensconced in a job he had worked at since graduating from high school, one he was steadfastly committed to, when he happened by a physical therapy room one day.
He thought to himself, “I’d like to work at that.” Little did he know, or even dream,  that he would become a physical therapist, helping others strive for a more comfortable and active life, while also lifting their spirits.

“Larry’s Country Diner” is a popular television show on the cable network RFD, located in Nashville, Tenn. Fred and Connie Bingaman of Brownstown met the people of the show while on vacation in Branson, Mo., where the show was in production.
The set of Larry’s Country Diner is, as the title indicates, a country diner with checkered tablecloths, matching curtains, and tables and chairs where the audience sits and is actually served food during the show.

Through the ages, the faces and sounds of Christmas have been at the traditional nativity manger scene. The songs have described the appearance of angels and the lowing of the cattle.
Over the years, in the church and Sunday school Christmas plays, the different faces around the manger have been many and of various ages. It is likely that many young children learned the names of animals such as the camels, sheep and donkeys from the representations of the manger scene.

The fourth Fayette Faces story under the theme of “Unwrapped Gifts” features the Vandalia Ministerial Alliance and the many volunteers who, for the fourth straight year, provided a free Thanksgiving dinner at the American Legion Home in Vandalia.
The free meal is for all who wish to come together in the spirit of sharing a community meal, regardless of financial status.
Many benefit and enjoy these “unwrapped gifts” and are as blessed by it as the many hands and hearts who prepare and contribute to it.

‘Tis the season for giving, and a potpourri of  “gift stories” is being featured in Fayette Faces   The theme – gifts do not always come wrapped in pretty paper and ribbons.

Recently, the story of Adrian and the unselfish gifts given to him by his birth mother and his adoptive mother was told.

This week, it is gift-giving of a different nature, but still in the spirit of giving. Meet the women of Brookstone Estates and their gifts to the less-fortunate—homeless dogs:

The year was 1908 – Theodore Roosevelt was president, Oklahoma was a new state coming into the Union, the average income was $490 a year, a loaf of bread cost five cents, the United States was in a Depression, population in U.S. was a little more than 87 million … and Mildred M. McDowell was born on Feb. 17.
The year was 1916 – A little girl was driving her family’s cows home on their rural Fayette County rural when a formation of four or five “flying machines” flew overhead.

Vandalia Main Street held its Spooktacular Saturday on Saturday in downtown available. In the first photo, Linda Kelly of the Evans Public Library staff, right, reads Halloween stories to a group of children. In the second photo, JoAnna Helm, owner of Word, Wicks and Wood, hands out candy to some of the children trick-or-treating at downtown businesses.