Norma Wiley faced some serious challenges in her life, and met them with courage and grace.
“She was tough,” said her daughter, Frances Deaton, 64, of Blackwell. “She dealt with polio, with the death of her mother when she was little.
“She never talked about what she didn’t have; she thought what she did have was great.”
Norma Wiley, a longtime teacher in the De Soto School District, died Jan. 27 at age 86 following a stroke.
Norma Whitt grew up during the Depression in a small cabin in the remote Hazel Creek area of the Lead Belt.
“It was way out in the boondocks,” Frances said. “Her father and grandfather dug tiff.”
Norma contracted polio before age 6, and was treated at Children’s Hospital in St. Louis.
“At that time, they didn’t really know if it was contagious,” Frances said. “She was kept in a ward with other polio kids, and nobody was allowed in the room. She was in a cast from the waist down.
“She said her Grandpa Jinkerson would ride the train up from Leadwood, and he’d pull up a chair outside her room and they’d visit from the doorway.”
Young Norma was left with a weakness in one leg. About the time she returned to her family, her mother died.
“She and her father moved in with his mother in Bismarck,” Frances said. “Her father later remarried, and my mom stayed with Grandma.”
Health remained an issue and there were other hospital stays for the child during elementary school.
“She just couldn’t do a lot of the things the other kids could because of her leg,” Frances said. “But, you know, it didn’t stop her. She did what she wanted to do; she just had a really bad limp.”
She graduated as valedictorian from Bismarck High, but chose marriage and motherhood over college. She had met James Wiley when his family moved in across the street from her grandmother’s home. He was 10 years her senior, and had spent six years in the U.S. Navy.
They were married in 1947, and had Frances in 1949 and Patty in 1956.
“When my sister was about 6, my mother decided to go to school to be a teacher,” Frances said. “She drove back and forth to Flat River Junior College. Teachers were in short supply, so they let her start teaching at Sunrise (Elementary, south of De Soto) while she finished her degree through Washington University.”
Mrs. Wiley taught two years at Sunrise before moving to Athena Elementary in the De Soto School District, where she finished out her career.
“She actually taught my sister one year,” Frances said with a laugh. “Mom told her, ‘I have to be harder on you so they don’t think I’m playing favorites.’”
Frances said her mother always sought to give more than the three R’s to her students.
“If she got a kid who was a discipline problem, she wanted to find out what the issues were that led them to act that way,” Frances said. “She didn’t believe there was such a thing as a bad child. There wasn’t a child she felt she couldn’t help in some way.”
Frances said her mother enjoyed having her daughters’ friends around the house.
“She expected us to mind – that was the schoolteacher in her – but she was definitely a caring person.”
Mrs. Wiley also mentored her fellow teachers.
“So many people have told me how she influenced their lives,” Frances said. “They say, ‘I went into it just as green as grass, and she was just wonderful to me.’
“She was very patient, and she enjoyed being with people.”
She also enjoyed traveling, often visiting family members.
“She and my dad went out West every summer,” Frances said. “They liked to camp a lot when I was growing up.”
After both retired, the Wileys took more frequent trips, often with one or more of their four grandchildren in tow.
A heart attack in the mid-1980s forced Mrs. Wiley into retirement at age 55, about the same time her husband reached retirement age.
“She recovered, but she wasn’t able to do much physically after that,” Frances said. “She played the piano, she quilted and she was active in the ladies group at First United Methodist (Church).”
She was widowed in 1994, and gradually began to have problems stemming from her long-ago bout with polio.
“She had a hip replacement, and the doctor said, ‘I’ll be honest. If you survived polio more than 70 years, you’re lucky.”
She began to have a lot of pain in her right leg, and for the past five years, she used a wheelchair.
“About two weeks before she died, she had a mild stroke,” Frances said. “A few days later, she couldn’t get out of bed.
“But her mind was sharp. When they did tests and asked her questions, she had all the answers. Ultimately, her heart just gave out.”
Organized to the last, Mrs. Wiley left instructions about her funeral.
“She was very much a no-nonsense person. She had her arrangements taken care of,” her daughter said. “We knew she didn’t want any flowers.”
The sisters recalled when Patty and their mother toured an Indian school in South Dakota during a trip shortly after their father died.
“My mother became a very big supporter,” Frances said. “We decided to use any donations to help those kids. The best way to honor her is to keep educating.”