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Texas writer blogging of Millarville, Foothills roots

Foothills: Elaine Thomas, nee Taylor, blogs about interesting people in Texas, Foothills
Elainethomas1
Elaine Thomas with Winston Parker at a Millarville Christmas Fair. Thomas, who wrote a biography about Parker, lives in Texas but grew up in the Millarville area, has started a blog Stories from the Slow Lane concerning interesting people in her life. Those include Dr. Morris Gibson and Parker. (Photo submitted)

A Texas writer is connecting with her readers in the Lone Star State through articles concerning the people in her life while growing up in the Millarville area.

“Everybody in Texas loves Alberta and most Albertans love Texas,” said Elaine Thomas, who grew up on a farm near the Leighton Art Centre. “I think the rural person who lives in the Foothills and the rural Texan where I live, they have such a common background and they virtually speak the same language…I get emails saying do more.”

It turns out an interesting topic written by an experienced reporter is a good read regardless from where the story originates.

Thomas has contributed to the Fayette County Record in Texas for several years – her 81st column, entitled Stories I’ve Been Told ran in the July 10 edition.

Meanwhile on her blog, Stories from the Slow Lane she’s been writing about people in both Texas and Alberta.

A recent piece My Doctor In the West was on Dr. Morris Gibson. She has also blogged on Winston Parker, the centenarian who grew up in the Millarville area,who is an accomplished horseman and a veteran of the Second World War. He was taken as a prisoner of war in Germany in 1942.  

“I believe there are lots and lots of great people whose stories are never told,” Thomas said. “I have kind of made it my mission to tell stories that otherwise would be lost… One of my goals was to share stories that resonate with me from my childhood in Canada.”

Dr. Gibson was an important part of Thomas’ life. As a child, Gibson, a new doctor in Okotoks, examined the then child Elaine Taylor at his Okotoks home before performing an appendectomy on her at High River Hospital.

Years later, Thomas’ grandmother (Emily Wylie) was a roommate of Gibson’s mother at the Twilight Nursing Home in High River.

“Our family saw Dr. Gibson occasionally when we went to visit granny,” Thomas said. “He was always so kind. This kind of speaks to the kind of man he was, he thanked my mom for my Granny helping to take care of his mom.”

Thomas has had a long-time friendship with Parker, whose biography Saddles and Service she wrote.

More recently her blog featured Parker in the July 3 article The Day Winston Churchill Met His Namesake. Winston Churchill Parker met Winston Churchill in the summer of 1941 at 10 Downing Street.

Thomas’ Texas and Millarville ties came together in her blog When Two Worlds Once Touched, published in April.

Thomas had written the book Same Moon Same Stars: The life of Renate Macherauch Meiners, in 2013. Meiners was a German war bride who married a Texas soldier and started a new life. 

A friendship developed between the writer and Meiners and Thomas gave her a copy of Saddles and Service.

The book tells of a horrific march a starving Parker and other prisoners were forced to take in Germany.

“When I went to see Renate one day she was in a terrible tizzy — I thought I had somehow done something very wrong,” Thomas said. “She had looked at Winston’s book and what she remembers in terms of dates, she had seen him (Parker) on that march where he almost died.

“She said the men were in such bad shape she was frightened and ran.”

Meiners asked Thomas to call Parker and ask him for forgiveness for how the Germans treated the prisoners of war and how she was afraid of Parker and the other men — treating them disrespectfully because of the way they looked.

Parker confirmed the dates and the place and accepted the apology.

“He said: ‘You go back and tell her there was absolutely nothing personal about this — that I had a good life and that I hope she had a good life… That I appreciate her comments but there are no hard feelings on my part at all.’”

Thomas has been a storyteller her whole life, and her love of writing was inspired by teachers at Red Deer Lake School, where she attended in the 1960s,

 “There are so many — every one of them helped in some way,” Thomas said.  

Some of those teachers include principal Norman Floen and teachers Donna Brasso, Doreen Arthurs, Theresa Patterson, Margaret Norris and Mary Poffenroth.

“What stuck with me with Mary was she had studied Latin and we were here in sixth grade and she is telling us the Latin derivatives of words — it was fascinating,” Thomas said with a laugh.

Thomas married and moved to Texas, where she also does public relations work as well as her blogging and contributions to the Fayette County Record.

“I have now lived in Texas longer than I did in Alberta,” she said.

However, she hasn’t forgotten the people and the memories of the Wild Rose province. In fact, her next blog, coming out on July 15, entitled Please Don’t Feed the Bears, is about when her mother, then 81-year-old Cecilia Taylor, confronted two grizzly bears at the farm in 1992.

Ma Taylor was assisted by her daughter, Shirley Goerlitz, in getting rid of the bruins.

Goerlitz was a long-time teacher with the Foothills School Division and has been a proofreader for Thomas since 1999.

As for the farm where the grizzly/81-year-old woman showdown took place, it is still in the family. It received the Century Farm and Ranch Award in 2018.

To check out Thomas’ Stories From the Slow Lane go to elainethomaswriter.com.

 

 

 

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