Thelma Cannon and her wheelchair were a familiar sight around the nursing home where she spent her last six years.
“She rolled around, waving and smiling at everyone,” said her daughter, Cindy Denbow, 58, of Pevely. “She loved people.”
Mrs. Cannon died Aug. 21 at age 90. She was a retired mail carrier with the Pevely Post Office and a 50-year member of the Order of the Eastern Star.
Mrs. Cannon was born in Arkansas and grew up there and in Indiana.
Young Thelma played the violin and learned piano as a student in both places. She was married shortly after high school, and waited in Arkansas while her new husband, James “Dub” Cannon, served in the U.S. Navy.
“She told about going on the train to visit him where he was stationed,” Cindy said. “My grandmother pinned her money to her slip, under her clothing, so she wouldn’t lose it or have it taken.”
After Mr. Cannon was discharged, the couple lived in Arkansas, where they welcomed their first child, Larry.
“They came up to St. Louis so my father could work in the shipyards,” Cindy said. “They lived in several different places around the city, then moved to Horine in about 1956.”
By then they had added sons David and Gary, and Cindy was born in 1958.
Mrs. Cannon was a stay-at-home mother with many talents.
“We played around the neighborhood and she was always there,” Cindy said. “She cooked; she sewed. She made me a dress in a watermelon print – that was one of my very favorite dresses.”
Mrs. Cannon enjoyed doing crafts, a hobby that would continue well into her later years.
“She was talented with her hands,” Cindy said. “I remember she took an old hobby horse and used beads and ribbons to make it a carousel horse. It was really pretty.
“And she always crocheted. After she had her first stroke, her hands were damaged and it was difficult, but she still did it. Then, after her second stroke, she just couldn’t any more.”
Once her children were all in school, Mrs. Cannon went to work as a mail carrier.
“She started as a sub; then pretty soon she got her own route,” Cindy said. “She drove her own car on the route, a four-wheel-drive vehicle, and she’d put the chains on and head out to deliver mail.”
The family enjoyed traveling and went camping every year.
“We’d go down to Arkansas and visit both sets of grandparents on a lot of weekends,” Cindy said. “One year, we drove out to Las Vegas to visit her sister who lived there.”
The Cannons were active in the First Baptist Church of Horine.
“Mom and dad were charter members,” Cindy said. “They started meeting in a home, then they built the church. My mom taught Sunday school, led the music, sang in the choir, taught in VBS – whatever they needed.”
The family faced an unspeakable tragedy in early 1969.
“My brother, Larry, was in the Navy, and he came home from Vietnam in November of 1968,” Cindy said. “Then he was killed in a motorcycle crash in January.
“It was a heartbreaking thing for our whole family.”
For more than half a century, Mrs. Cannon enjoyed her association with the Order of the Eastern Star, a Masonic organization for adult women and men.
“Every Thursday night was their meeting,” Cindy said. “She got her 50-year pin not too long ago, there in the nursing home.”
Mrs. Cannon served as the local chapter’s Worthy Matron, and she and her husband traveled to group functions.
“She and my dad went to the annual Grand Chapter meetings they’d have, either in St. Louis or Kansas City,” Cindy said. “They made so many friends all over the state.”
One year, she was named Grand Organist of the Missouri state chapter.
“She always played piano,” Cindy said. “So she taught herself to play the organ.”
Mrs. Cannon retired in the early 1980s and her husband in 1986. The couple enjoyed traveling – they went to Hawaii for their 50th wedding anniversary – and practicing their hobbies.
“He did woodwork, and she did painting,” Cindy said. “They had their Eastern Star and church activities, and they spent a lot of time with the grandchildren.”
They even put in a pool at their home, in part, to entertain the grandchildren.
“My dad would pick them up from vacation Bible school, take them home and they’d swim and grill hot dogs,” Cindy said.
When her husband died of cancer in 2010, the family knew life would get tougher for Mrs. Cannon.
“She had a stroke in the early 1990s, then another one in 2000,” Cindy said. “He had been her caregiver.”
With help, she was able to stay in her home for about a year and a half.
“Then she fell and fractured a hip in April 2012,” her daughter said. “They did therapy, but she never could walk again. She went to live at Crystal Oaks, and she was in a wheelchair for the rest of her time.”
Just a week after her 90th birthday, Mrs. Cannon somehow fell from her wheelchair, re-fracturing the same hip.
“She was too frail for them to operate,” Cindy said. “They were able to keep her comfortable with medication. Her last great-grandbaby was born in February, and we brought him to see her in the hospital. That was nice. And when she passed, it was peaceful.”